The memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran may allow both governments to claim victory after a relatively short but destructive war. Oil markets will eventually calm, and shipping routes will reopen. But the biggest losers of this war—the people of Iran—will be forgotten.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both promised support for Iranians after thousands of unarmed protesters were massacred by the Islamic Republic in January.
But the war that followed undermined Iran’s ability to function even further, with the United States and Israel destroying critical infrastructure necessary for sustaining the lives of tens of millions of Iranians.
The war has exacerbated all the national crises that Iranians faced before the war, from water and food shortages to electricity blackouts. It has also led to greater medicine shortages, fuel disruptions, international isolation, psychological trauma, and more frequent repression than ever before.
And now that the guns have quieted, the Trump administration appears to have adopted policies that will empower the Iranian government and help it continue its brutal repression of the Iranian people. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has even spoken of the potential for a $300 billion fund that the notoriously corrupt regime, now even more dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), can use to “rebuild” the country after the war.
The memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran may lower the immediate risk of war and allow both sides to claim victory. But without strict conditions, transparency, and enforcement, sanctions relief and reconstruction exemptions will not reach ordinary Iranians. The money is likely to pass to the same IRGC-linked contractors, regime foundations, ministries, banks, and sanctions-era middlemen that wrecked the country in the first place and created the conditions for war.
The war did not create Iran’s environmental crisis. But it further undermined civilian systems that keep Iranian society alive: drinking water networks, power grids, fuel distribution centers, hospitals, and food supply chains.
For example, Israeli airstrikes on Tehran’s oil depots released a dangerous mix of pollutants, including fine particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and other toxic combustion by-products. Satellite analysis reported that the fires released about 29,800 tons of sulfur dioxide and that the plume affected an area roughly the size of Italy.
These pollutants do not simply disappear when the smoke clears. Fine particles and sulfur compounds can travel long distances, while soot and toxic combustion residues can settle onto soil and water; contaminate agricultural systems; and reenter the human body through rain, dust, and crops.
The United States also struck critical civilian infrastructure with no military value, including water storage tanks serving 20,000 ordinary Iranians in Hormozgan province.
Every piece of wrecked infrastructure has ripple effects. For example, a damaged refinery can reduce fuel for water pumps, food transport, hospital generators, farm machinery, and emergency crews. Power disruptions from war-damaged energy plants can interrupt drinking water delivery, refrigeration, communications, and medical care. Bombed roads, depots, and logistics networks can delay food, medicine, spare parts, and repairs.
If Iranians were being led by a new government that had their interests at heart, there might be some hope of real change. But despite Trump’s statement that a “new regime” has emerged in Iran after the war, the reality on the ground is grim.
The war may have resulted in the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of other top regime officials and IRGC officers. But the regime had planned for the decapitation of its leadership for decades, especially after observing the 2003 “shock and awe” U.S. invasion of Iraq. The regime knew how to quickly reassemble its leadership and continue to fight the war while maintaining a tight grip on the population.
The men who have replaced Khamenei and his deputies—including his son Mojtaba Khamenei —appear to be no different than their predecessors. They are violent, corrupt, and often fanatical. They may make deals with Washington for their own survival and benefit, but they know that any loosening of their grip on power may lead to their own demise.
The money that Trump will provide to these men will not benefit the Iranian people, but it will instead further enrich a wide web of regime institutions such as Khatam al-Anbiya, the IRGC’s main engineering, construction, and contracting arm.
These institutions have driven Iran’s environmental degradation by using public resources to create personal wealth and political power. Dams, inter-basin water transfers, deep wells, and water intensive industries in dry regions became lucrative projects for regime-linked contractors and officials. The result has been depleted aquifers, damaged rivers, shrinking lakes and wetlands, land subsidence, and collapsing rural livelihoods.
Notably, while degrading Iran’s environment, regime institutions such as Khatam al-Anbiya have used the country’s resources to dig tunnels and underground halls for nuclear facilities and missile cities.
Khatam al-Anbiya and regime foundations, or bonyad, are also likely to profit handsomely from contracts from the regime and perhaps even foreign actors as a result of any agreement between the United States and Iran.
The priority of these organizations will be to enrich themselves and rebuild the regime’s military capacity, not to rebuild Iran’s civilian infrastructure.
The Trump administration could still help the Iranian people by placing real conditions on sanctions relief and reconstruction-related exemptions. Reconstruction contracts should face public disclosure and competitive tendering. IRGC-linked and sanctioned contractors should be excluded or strictly monitored, not quietly rehabilitated through subcontracting opportunities. Environmental damage assessments should be conducted by credible independent experts, with findings made public.
Without those safeguards, “help” will become another revenue stream for the regime’s survival. The Islamic Republic will emerge from this war battered but more paranoid, more militarized, and more willing to use violence against the people than ever before.
When Washington says that “help is on its way,” many Iranians will have a follow-up question. Help for whom? For the people breathing black rain, waiting for clean water, and bearing the cost of decisions they never made? Or for the regime officials, contractors, and foundations that will manage the next river of money flowing to the regime?
