I feel like the world is now living a real-life Jerry Seinfeld routine: "What's the deal... with the deal?!?"

Over the weekend, Donald Trump apparently reached a deal with the Iranians. But as of now, it is raising more questions than it is answering. To begin with: Was the deal electronically signed yesterday? Or maybe it was signed today? Or will there be a formal signing ceremony this Friday? The answers seem to shift. Nobody's quite sure even of that basic fact -- is it a "done deal" or not?

Next: What is actually in the deal? Nobody knows, because it has not been publicly released. Why hasn't it been released? Nobody will say. If it hasn't been signed and won't be until Friday, then perhaps they are keeping the details under wraps so that neither side decides to renegotiate certain parts of it. Perhaps the deal is so embarrassing for both sides that they don't want the public to learn anything about it until it is actually a fait accompli, with signatures and everything (whether electronic or ink).

Speculation abounds, to fill this vacuum. If I were to guess, I would say that Trump doesn't want to admit what is in the deal because he is afraid of getting serious blowback from the more hawkish members of his own party. Lindsey Graham (for instance) is already expressing some skepticism. Whenever the GOP hawks learn the actual details, they may start denouncing the deal as inadequate (and that's putting it mildly). Which is why keeping the whole thing under wraps would make a lot of sense for now, because if this blowback happens before the deal is actually signed, it could lead Trump to (once again) change his mind and tear the whole deal up (which has indeed happened before).

Trump is going to have to eventually face this blowback. Pretty much all of his stated objectives heading into this war are going to be unmet by the initial deal, that much already seems obvious. The Iranian regime did not change. The Iranian people did not rise up and overthrow their government. Their military capabilities have been degraded, but they still have a whole bunch of missiles and drones. The highly-enriched uranium is still right where it was when the war began. And Iran still supports proxy forces elsewhere in the region (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other groups). None of this will be fully addressed by the initial deal, and some of it won't even be up for further discussion. No matter how hard Trump tries to spin things, he has pretty obviously failed to achieve his stated objectives for going to war in the first place. Which is why some political blowback seems inevitable.

The biggest achievements in the initial deal will merely reset things to where they were before the war began. The Strait of Hormuz will reopen, and the U.S. blockade of Iran's ports will end. But Iran is now pushing to charge some sort of fees or tolls to ships transiting through what used to be considered international waters. This would set a horrible precedent, and it would be a clear victory for Iran, so the U.S. is likely to push back hard against such a system.

There will doubtless be some sort of statement in the initial agreement where Iran swears it will never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon. This will be touted by Trump as the biggest victory ever in the entire history of the Middle East, but in reality it will be nothing new -- they've made such statements continuously for half a century now. And Iran is still insistent that it will retain the ability to enrich uranium, even if it turns over the half-ton of uranium gas that has been enriched within one short technical step of being bomb-grade. These are all things that will be negotiated in the second round (which is optimistically supposed to only take 60 days).

How much money will Iran get (and when) is also a big unanswered question. They say they have $24 billion in frozen assets that they want freed up, and they've also proposed a $300 billion "development fund" that seems more like war reparations than anything else. Iran receiving any money at all is also almost sure to cause some political blowback for Trump. Trump has so far insisted that Iran will only get money after they demonstrate progress (in things like opening up the Strait), but even so the hawkish Republicans aren't going to be thrilled by it. Iran is also demanding an end to all of the economic sanctions the U.S. has inflicted upon them.

What is Israel's role in all of this going to be? Israel is not a party to this deal, but Iran seems to be assuming that they are a client state of the U.S., and that Trump can effectively order them to do things or refrain from doing things. Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't see things this way, though. He's got his own political problems domestically, and he's going to do whatever he feels like doing, even if Donald Trump yells at him. This could wind up destroying even the initial deal the U.S. and Iran are making (or have already made, if it has indeed already been signed).

So the world waits for answers. It is downright bizarre that an international deal of this magnitude has not been made public -- especially if it has already been signed. Keeping it under wraps just fuels speculation about what is in the deal that the leaders of Iran and Donald Trump don't want people to know about. Hopefully the text of the agreement will soon be publicly unveiled (perhaps on Friday?) so that everyone can see what has and what has not been agreed to by both sides.

For now, we all wait, while Seinfeld echoes in our minds: What's the deal... with "the deal"?!?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant