The Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the United States, which President Trump signed Wednesday, has been met with both positive and negative reactions. Both a former security aide of Trump’s and an Iranian resistance leader, however, are praising the agreement.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, an Iranian dissident and deputy director of the Washington Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told Just the News on Thursday that he’s looking at the bigger picture amid criticisms of the deal, which, to him, is that any opportunity to end all hostilities should be welcomed.

The current regime has used the war as a “shield to protect itself against the uprising,” according to Jafarzadeh, who believes the real, unchanging war is the one between the regime and the people of Iran. He said the only way to end the current regime is through the Iranian people, which is the responsibility of the organized resistance and the people of Iran.

“The regime is certainly scared of the prospect of the end of the hostilities,” he told Just the News.

In January, the regime killed thousands of protesters to “temporarily stay in power” when Iranian people held protests in all 31 provinces of the country, Jafarzadeh said.

He thinks the regime saw the resistance movement’s power when it launched a massive assault on the headquarters of Supreme Leader Khamenei back in January. The Supreme Leader was killed in late February after the U.S. and Israel launched a joint military operation in Iran.

Jafarzadeh urged that the agreement needs to include a regulation that ends executions in Iran, which he believes is one main pillar of the regime that’s keeping it in power.

He doesn’t think the deal can be compared to Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran because the regime is much weaker now than it was in 2015.

The war has diminished the regime: it doesn’t have a navy or air force, and pretty much no chance of building a nuclear weapon at this time.

“I’m sure the ayatollahs in Tehran are scared to death,” Jafarzadeh said.

The Grand Paris Free Iran Rally, an anti-Iranian regime protest with over 100,000 expected attendees and a message of rejecting the Shah’s past dictatorship and current theocracy, is scheduled for Saturday in Paris, France. Jafarzadeh thinks the rally will put the regime on notice.

“The future is bright, not just for the people of Iran, but for the rest of the world,” Jafarzadeh said.

K.T. McFarland, former deputy national security advisor for President Trump, thinks the deal is “terrific” and “brilliant” for a number of reasons, namely: Iran’s ability to have a nuclear weapon is restricted, other countries in the region that normally sit out these conflicts in the agreement are included (meaning the deal isn’t just between the U.S. and Iran), the U.S. economy will improve from oil prices decreasing, and more. She also said that if Iran doesn’t comply with the deal, there will be both military and financial consequences.

“If Iran gets out of line, if they don’t behave, boom, they’ll get attacked,” she said. 

Financially, the U.S. has full visibility into the location of Iran’s funds.

When the country bombed luxury hotels in Dubai in February during a wave of retaliatory drone and missile strikes against the United Arab Emirates, countries in that region told the U.S. Treasury Department that Iran was keeping its offshore bank accounts in Dubai and hiding money in cryptocurrency.

This enabled the U.S. to track Iran’s spending. McFarland said any claims that Iran is cheating on the deal aren’t credible because, even if it were, the U.S. would see and respond quickly enough.

“We’ll see them cheating if they try to rebuild their nuclear program, if they try to rebuild their military … if they try to move money around,” she said.

A few weeks ago, Trump began freezing Iran’s crypto accounts, which created financial pressure on Iran behind the scenes ahead of the peace deal and MOU signing.

McFarland touted Vice President JD Vance’s candor on Thursday in his stern warning to Israel that the country “better not sabotage this deal,” as the U.S. is one of Israel’s strongest supporters.

“At the end of the day, this is a deal that Israel should love, because it’ll be peace in the Middle East,” she continued.

McFarland predicts Trump will turn to dealing with the Ukraine war once the Iran conflict is resolved, which he noted in a press conference on Wednesday, saying, “I think they both want to do something, they just don’t know how to do it.”

Katherine Pugh is a reporter for Just the News. Follow her on X for more coverage.