‘I trust President Trump’

Despite the controversial US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the daily skirmishes in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s refusal to surrender its uranium, Sylvan Adams – the prominent Canadian-Israeli businessman, philanthropist, and President of the World Jewish Congress, Israel – is convinced US President Donald Trump is fully aware of Iran’s duplicitous tactics, and has ensured the MoU will not limit him from acting to prevent Iran from achieving its aims.

Subsequent developments lent weight to his assessment. We spoke with Adams last week, just days before hostilities between the US and Iran resumed in a tit-for-tat exchange, casting fresh doubt on the fragile MoU and the future of the negotiations.

In an extensive interview, Adams discussed President Trump’s Iran strategy, the global, planned campaign of antisemitism organized by Israel’s enemies, and his optimistic outlook.

Beginning with the US-Iran conflict, Adams says, “On paper, the MoU is a terrible agreement. “It offers a concession on all of the items that Trump had previously rejected from Iran. It sells out the Iranian people in offering an economic lifeline to the regime, which is frankly a tragedy, especially in the aftermath of when Trump said that help was on the way, in January and February.”

However, looking more closely at the text, Adams sees several positive aspects of the agreement. Unlike the Obama Administration’s JCPOA, which was a one-stop, final agreement, the MoU, he explains, is a tiered arrangement that sets out specific milestones over time. After the signing of the MoU on June 17, a 60-day period began in which negotiations would be held on a permanent framework to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, long-term IAEA monitoring and verification, and the disposition of Iran’s enriched uranium, among other issues. To date, most of these issues have not been settled. Adams says the agreement is then renewable for another 60 days after the initial 60-day agreement expires on August 17, ending on October 17, shortly before the US mid-term elections.

Adams says that, in his opinion, Trump views the MoU as a transactional agreement, in which the Iranians will be entitled to collect funds for permitting the transfer of ships through Hormuz in exchange for lower oil prices.

“The MoU bought President Trump time,” he says. “It also very successfully reduced the price of oil to close to the prewar price. He accomplished everything he wanted, and he made only a very small concession to the Iranians by offering them waivers for their daily and monthly oil shipments through the strait. He offered to remove the blockade in exchange for safe passage for commercial shipping in the strait.

In short, this is a temporary ‘Hormuz for Hormuz’ deal. Adams adds, “With a trillion dollars of damage to their infrastructure, the few billion per month that these waivers will allow won’t put much of a dent in the regime’s dismal economic prospects.”

President Trump, he says, does not want to risk Republican losses in the midterm elections and wants quiet, along with lower oil prices, to prevail through the elections. Despite the agreement, Adams says that the Iranians are completely misreading Trump’s intentions. “They’re trying to humiliate Donald Trump and show him that they’re the boss. This is a very bad tactic with this president.”

Once the 120 days have ended and the midterm elections have passed, he says, if the Iranians have not complied with the terms of the MoU, the US can reimpose Operation Economic Fury. This economic campaign followed the US military offensive that targeted Iran’s oil exports, shipping networks, banks, and front companies, together with a naval blockade that prevented Iranian oil and other goods from reaching international markets.  

“The Iranians have never agreed to eliminate their nuclear ambitions even under the most intense pressures. So, there is little reason to believe that they will change their tune when they are feeling empowered,” Adams said.

“In November, when the elections are over, and these talks have reached an impasse yet again, Trump doesn’t have to start bombing  Iran again. Most of the high-value targets have been destroyed. There’s little military action that the Iranians can do. They’re not in any kind of nuclear breakout situation. Their ballistic missiles have been significantly curtailed. They can start to rebuild, but it will take them time. But using Operation Economic Fury and the blockade, Trump can put the squeeze on them.”

In addition, waiting several months to resume Operation Economic Fury, adds Adams, will give the US military sufficient time to prepare their efforts to accompany and protect commercial shipping through the strait until the Iranian regime falls.

Adams says clearly that the only thing that can end Iran’s nuclear ambitions and other malevolent behavior is regime change. Until that happens, he says, Iran will continue its development, regardless of any sanctions imposed on it.  Ultimately, though, regime change must come from within. “We cannot solve that problem for them,” he shares. “We can support them, including arming them. We can help long-suffering Iranians, and we can help organize, but the boots on the ground must be Iranian – not American or Israeli ones.”

Turning his attention to the worldwide campaign of antisemitism that has spread since Oct. 7, Adams termed it a premeditated, financed global campaign of antisemitism that had been planned for decades and emerged after the Hamas attacks. “It was always there at a lower level, but after Oct. 7, beginning the next day, the Qataris and the Muslim Brotherhood flicked the switch, and they put their plan into action, thinking that this was their time to destroy the Jewish people. None of it was spontaneous or organic.”

Adams noted that according to a June report issued by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), Qatar has spent and invested over $400 billion in the US since 2000, leveraging its wealth to gain influence. According to the FDD analysis, the Qatar Foundation International (QFI), an educational nonprofit run by Sheikha Moza, the wife of Qatar’s emir, has given at least $8 million to American public schools since 2010, and Qatar has provided $62.4 billion to American universities since 1981.

Adams stated mockingly that this investment in American universities wasn’t intended to improve the environment, medical outcomes, or technology. “The Brotherhood and their Qatari paymasters infiltrated the US educational system to brainwash an entire generation of students at the most elite universities in the US, and a broad cross-section of universities,” says Adams. “It was no accident that when the tent camps sprouted on the campuses [after Oct. 7], they all happened together at the same time. And likewise, that they were all the same color and the same tent brand. This was pre-planned and pre-financed. The Qataris are in cahoots with Erdogan. The Qataris are paying the bill, so that Erdogan gets a free ride to practice his antisemitism.”

Adams notes that other groups have added to the lethal mix of antisemitism – the Iranians, the Shiite operatives from Hezbollah, and the Chinese, who have been using TikTok to provide messages against the West.
The Jews are not the final target, he asserts. “Israel and the Jews are only the first in the crosshairs. Their objective is to overthrow our Western way of life. This is a foreign invasion. The West needs to wake up. Their first objective is to get rid of the Jews. But their ultimate objective is world domination with their messianic Islamic ideas and to remove our freedom and to change our way of life.”

Despite the Iranian crisis and the scourge of antisemitism that has spread throughout the world, Adams is optimistic and says that Israel is in a better place than it was three years ago.

“If we look at where we were on October 6, when Hezbollah had more than 120,000 missiles trained on Israel, with the Iranian regime rushing towards nuclear weapons, with the Iranians ramping up their ballistic missile program, with Hamas pre-Oct. 7 lobbing missiles every day routinely into southern Israel  – compared to where we are now, there’s been a tremendous improvement. Hamas is defeated. Hezbollah has been largely defanged. The Iranians have been set back enormously. They’re no longer an immediate nuclear threat. We need to thwart them, but they do not pose an immediate nuclear threat.

“I have enormous faith in our military. We’ve demonstrated after the utter disaster of Oct. 7, where we completely had let our guard down, where we, the citizens of Israel, were let down by our military and political leaders. The way we’ve turned the tables on our enemies makes me optimistic that we’re on the right path. If we can see regime change in Iran, it will be a game-changer. We’ve demonstrated to other Gulf nations that we never had relations with, such as Kuwait, Oman, and even the Saudis, that Israel is the superpower here in the region, and we have strengthened our relationship with the Emiratis and the Bahrainis.

“We could be on the cusp of seeing a massive peace breakout in the Middle East.”