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**Trump Announces Ceasefire With Iran, Fends Off Allegations That The US Caved, But Didn't It?**

The United States is now considering handing Iran $20 billion in frozen assets to end a war that the US started. That is the headline the Trump administration does not want anyone to focus on. According to Axios and CNN, American negotiators are actively discussing the release of frozen Iranian funds — first $6 billion, then up to $20 billion — in exchange for Iran surrendering its enriched uranium stockpile. Trump himself denied the reports on Truth Social, claiming "we are not paying 10 cents," even as his own negotiating team put the numbers on the table. His Cabinet, MAGA-friendly media, and the White House communications machine are working overtime to sell the story that Iran blinked first. The evidence says otherwise.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a joint bombing campaign against Iran dubbed "Operation Epic Fury," killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his defense minister, and dozens of senior military and political leaders in the opening hours. The US struck over 10,000 targets in the weeks that followed, obliterating Iran's navy, hitting energy infrastructure, steelworks, and military sites. Iran fired back across the Middle East — at US bases, at Gulf states, at Israel — killing eleven American soldiers and thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians in the crossfire. Seven weeks of war later, with no decisive victory in hand, the US agreed to a two-week ceasefire on April 7. The first round of direct talks in Pakistan, led by Vice President JD Vance, collapsed without a deal on April 12. Both sides blamed each other.

Here is what makes the "Iran caved" narrative fall apart. Before a single bomb dropped, Iran was already at the negotiating table. Omani officials who mediated pre-war talks confirmed that Tehran had made offers that went beyond the 2015 nuclear accord — the same deal Trump tore up during his first term. Those talks were broken off on February 28, the day the US and Israel chose to attack. In other words, Iran was offering more than Obama got, and the response was a bombing campaign. Now, after weeks of destruction, the US is back at the table discussing terms that include releasing billions in Iranian money. That is not the posture of a nation that forced the other side to surrender.

Trump has made a string of claims on social media that Iran has "agreed to everything" — handing over uranium, permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off funding to Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran has denied nearly all of it. Tehran's foreign ministry pushed back publicly, and state media figures attacked their own foreign minister for appearing too conciliatory. A military adviser to Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said he does not even support extending the ceasefire. Iran's key demands remain on the table: war reparations, the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, and an end to Israeli strikes on Lebanon. None of those have been met.

Meanwhile, the economic wreckage of this war is landing hardest on the people who had nothing to do with starting it. Gas prices jumped 21.2 percent in March alone, pushing annual inflation to 3.3 percent. The Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes — was effectively shut down for weeks, sending global energy markets into chaos. Oxford Economics projects 2026 will bring the slowest consumer spending growth since 2013, excluding the pandemic. And the damage is not evenly distributed. Lower- and middle-income households spend a far higher share of their budgets on gas and food, meaning Black families and working-class communities absorb the worst of these price shocks while billionaires and defense contractors profit from the chaos.

This is a pattern Black America knows well. Wars launched with bold promises and chest-thumping press conferences, paid for with the paychecks of people who never got a vote on whether to start them. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal — negotiated under President Obama — was working. International inspectors verified Iran's compliance. Trump ripped it up to score political points, spent years escalating sanctions and tensions, then launched a full-scale bombing campaign when Iran was already offering to negotiate. Now, after killing thousands and destabilizing the global economy, the administration is circling back to a deal that will likely give Iran much of what it wanted before the first bomb fell — plus $20 billion.

The ceasefire expires April 22. Trump says a deal could come "in a day or two." He has also threatened to resume bombing if no deal is reached by Wednesday. The Strait of Hormuz is technically open to commercial traffic, but the US naval blockade on Iranian ships and ports remains. Israel continues to strike targets in Lebanon despite the separate 10-day truce announced on April 16. Nothing is settled. The administration is selling victory while the war's consequences — dead soldiers, shattered economies, rising prices — are still unfolding in real time. The question is not whether Iran caved or the US caved. The question is why this war was started at all when diplomacy was already on the table.