What to know as Trump calls off Iran strikes

Margaret, you frequently interview members on both sides of the aisle, and obviously history will be the judge on whether this operation was successful. But has it already damaged the president politically to a certain extent? Well, if we saw that secondary energy price shock, politically it could damage the president's party in terms of this midterm election cycle that we're in the middle of. We're about, what, five months out from it. So for anyone who's trying to buy a plane ticket or fueling up the car during the summer months, they were going to feel it even more acutely and might not feel that positive about showing up to vote in the fall. That's a political concern for the president. What we also know is that in Congress, some of the Iran Hawks have been very concerned that the president has been too eager to get a deal. So some of the people in his own party are out there going wait a second. We need to see the text of whatever is agreed to here. And this wouldn't be a new argument. In fact, during the Obama administration, many of the very same Iran Hawks said wait a second. President of the United States can't put together a deal like this without consulting with lawmakers first. And it is very interesting that just in the last few minutes, Senator Lindsey Graham, huge Iran Hawks, huge supporter of Israel, oftentimes on that golf course beside the president, is saying, wait a second, I want to see this deal come before Congress for review. There has been a deep concern that the president has been too eager for political reasons, or at least just to get this done to make a deal. And for some they see this as a goal-- a war where the prime goals have yet to be achieved and a war which would be ended by negotiating with the very same regime that just months ago, the president was saying needed to be removed from power. It is the same regime that you hear them refer to for the past 47 years has been at war with the United States. So by cutting a deal with that regime, it is guaranteeing that regime remains in power, at least for the foreseeable future in some way, because the United States would be freeing up funds to them, would be releasing pressure on them by lifting those sanctions. So this is not without controversy politically for the president. So either way, he is in a tough spot, and then the other factor we haven't talked about, the Israeli Prime Minister. It was Israel and the United States locked arm in arm that launched this campaign in February and by the way last June launched the bombing campaign on the three nuclear sites. It is not clear that the US and Israel are aligned on the end state to this conflict. And they have their own politics at home as well. So that's a long way of saying it's not done until it's done.

Margaret Brennan, thank you so much. Let's go to CBS News Middle East contributor Courtney Kealy. Courtney, what would you like to pick up on? Well, Margaret made some really important points. The one thing that she said was that President Trump doesn't necessarily control what Prime Minister Netanyahu will do in Lebanon, in Southern Lebanon. And we've seen those issues recently in terms of the Iranian regime which is now more militaristic or coalesced around the military and less around the religious clerics than it's been in the last 47 years in recent months, since this war. The military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, wants to see a ceasefire between Hezbollah and the Israelis. And that's been going back and forth, and then we saw the Prime Minister, Netanyahu, hit Dahia outside the Southern suburbs of but within the outskirts of Beirut. And the Iranians balked at that. So these drafts of the memo of understanding were released to both sides. They agreed to take it from the Pakistanis on Memorial Day weekend, but then they stopped. And as Margaret said, one of the reasons while President Trump was trying to decide and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was saying he's looking at this, the Republican, his base balked at what he was going to agree on. The biggest issue before we even get to nuclear is this unfreezing of funds because there's a lot of money. It's about $24 billion. They would release half about $12 billion to get-- to keep this-- to keep going down the road, it would-- a memo of understanding to continue to talk for 30 days to 60 days and then to start even talking about the really hard things like the nuclear issues, the nuclear plant issues Margaret mentioned. Last year when they hit Natanz, for instance, where the highly enriched uranium is, some people believe it's under Natanz. Some people believe that Pickaxe Mountain as it's called is another nuclear site that the Iranians have been working on since that 12 Day War and the US bombing last June. So a lot to work out. The IAEA has not had eyes on this. It really is now not just the old regime, not the grandfathers of the Islamic Revolution revolution, but the sons and the grandsons. So you have Machava Khamenei. He hasn't appeared in public. We haven't heard his voice. We haven't seen his face. But apparently he is among the leadership. He served in the Iran-Iraq war at 17 years old. The [? Hamid ?] Battalion that he served in, they're all heads and top leadership right now that have coalesced around each other in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and seized the power from some of these families like Ali Larijani. Ali Larijani was killed since the war began. Some people were also killed, some of these elected leadership. So while the Iranian people were hoping for regime change, what it looked like is it changed or morphed into a more militaristic, a more Iranian Revolutionary Guard power base that goes all the way back to them serving together in their teens and 20s and 30s that are now sitting as a consortium, deciding whether they will go forward with any kind of deal that the US is talking about or they're talking about. But they give so many hard lines, and it's hard to get past anything. Ceasefire in Southern Lebanon, no bombing in Beirut, what will they do with the highly enriched uranium? How long will they even start talking about whether Iran can have a peaceful nuclear program, whether they can enrich anything, whether they will take the HEU, the highly enriched uranium, out of the country and bring it to a third country? These are all things we've been circulating. I've been telling you over and over again. We keep hearing it, but what they're at now is the idea we can start talking. We have a memo of understanding. It's literally what it sounds like. We can start with this, we can start talking, and we can start taking things off the box. But there are many different equations, one of them, Southern Lebanon, which has now become a thing, a huge issue with Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu has going into elections. That's regional, but that's now also global.

Courtney Kealy, thank you so much for your analysis.