“This wasn’t easy.”
That’s the verdict of President Donald Trump, as he finally signed a deal to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Global powers will hope the 14-point agreement offers some relief for the international economy, still suffering the ripple effects of Iran’s throttling of the vital waterway.
Yet the conclusion of one lengthy and tense period of talks will only herald another. The details of a “final” U.S.-Iran agreement, likely to be even more thorny, still need to be thrashed out during a 60-day negotiation between Washington and Tehran, starting Friday in the Swiss Alps.
Iran has claimed the interim agreement as a victory, while critics and many independent experts have said the terms heavily favor Tehran. Even Trump, while saying the deal was “very strong,” appeared to concede that he signed it in order to prevent “economic catastrophe” and the world “going into a depression.”
Speaking at the G7 summit in France, Trump acknowledged his deal did not achieve some of his initial war goals, including ending Iran’s ballistic missile program, before he put pen to paper on Wednesday. He signed the deal at the Palace of Versailles, where Germany’s surrender to end World War I was sealed in 1918.
Trump and his allies had pilloried and eventually ripped up President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, in part because it failed to address Iran’s missile arsenal. But Trump appeared to defend Tehran’s right to possess such weapons after the issue was left out of his agreement.
If other countries have ballistic missiles, “it’s a little bit unfair for Iran not to have some,” Trump told reporters in France. “If Saudi Arabia and Qatar all have some, in relative proportion I think it’s OK.”
Trump asked if he would be OK with a civilian nuclear program in Iran
That remark was quoted approvingly by state-controlled news agencies in Tehran, where the deal has largely been framed as a triumph for Iran’s negotiators.
Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the deal showed how Iran “did not allow America and Israel to achieve” the “objectives they had set at the beginning of the war,” according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.
“The Iranians don’t give up the right of self-defense in their country, but we do expect that as part of the final deal they are not going to be able to build the kind of missiles that can broadly threaten the entire world,” Vice President JD Vance told a White House briefing Thursday. “You can’t tell a country, whether Israel or Iran, they’re not allowed to have any self-defense.”
The White House has not formally published the text of the deal, which was distributed to the news media including NBC News by a senior U.S. official who said its release was delayed briefly at the request of Iran.
While Obama’s 18-page agreement in 2015 covered only Iran’s nuclear program, Trump’s deal, despite being only two pages, touches on a host of other topics, from shipping to the unfreezing of Iranian assets and, controversially, funds for reconstruction of the Islamic Republic.
While Israel is not a direct party to the agreement, the text also specifies that fighting must also halt in Lebanon, where a continued Israeli air and ground assault has targeted the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Ceasefire agreements between Israel and Lebanon’s government have repeatedly failed in recent months.
According to the memorandum of understanding, Iran has reaffirmed a promise not to develop nuclear weapons — which it did under Obama’s 2015 deal — and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — which was the case before the U.S. and Israel launched the war Feb. 28. The free passage of ships is only guaranteed during the 60 days of talks, with further negotiations expected with Oman and Gulf countries on future arrangements but no guarantees of what might happen afterward.
The deal also commits to the “disposition” and dilution of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium based on a “mutually agreed upon” mechanism. Trump said Wednesday that it was “not important” whether this happens immediately because it was monitoring the site. “When we have a chance, we’ll do it,” he said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has pledged to “terminate all types of sanctions,” including the export of crude oil that has long been the lifeblood of the Iranian economy. The U.S. says it will work with regional partners to set up a $300 billion redevelopment fund for Iran, which has been bombed heavily during the conflict, though Trump and a senior official denied that the U.S. would put up money itself.
Many details have been left vague, perhaps intentionally so, with thorny issues pushed off into the “final” agreement.
“The major issues, the ones where both the U.S. and Iran have laid out their red lines very clearly,” have been “punted to the 60-day negotiation window,” said Dina Esfandiary, the Middle East geoeconomics lead for Bloomberg Economics, Bloomberg’s internal research division.
“Essentially, what this does is it effectively extends the ceasefire that was already in place in order to give space for the negotiators to talk over the next 60 days,” Esfandiary said.
“Iran isn’t giving much, but it’s getting a hell of a lot in return,” Esfandiary added.
With the U.S. already agreeing to lift all sanctions, it is less clear what remains to be offered in future negotiations. Vance, who said he will lead the negotiating team, expressed hope that the final deal would “ensure” that the Strait of Hormuz is “never used as a choke point for the global economy,” that Iran stops “funding regional instability,” and that it does not try to rebuild its nuclear weapons program, without giving details on what the U.S. plans to offer to achieve those goals. “We have all the cards,” he said.
Vance said the deal includes some “gentleman’s agreements” with Iran that are not written down, without giving details. He also expressed hope that the deal could spur Iran to seek a “transformative relationship with the Middle East,” adding: “If they don’t, no skin off our backs either way.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said Thursday that “it was the American president who, out of desperation,” sought a deal.
He said that “the in-person negotiations that will take place in the future will not mean acceptance of the enemy’s position,” and that “if the American side seeks to make excessive demands,” Iran will not submit to them.
Some Republicans have been scathing about the contents of the deal, including outgoing Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, both of whom lost primary battles to Trump-endorsed opponents.
Cassidy dubbed the deal “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.” He told NBC News: “Iran is left stronger, we are left weaker. Our allies are left weaker. Iran gets $300 billion to rebuild, which they will use some of it to support things we don’t care for. I think that we have 13 Americans dead, we’ve spent anywhere from $25 to $100 billion in munitions, and it turns out we’ve lost the credible threat of attacking them again.”
“Everything I’ve heard about it causes me concern,” Conryn said. “There’s nothing to stop the regime from beginning to block the Strait of Hormuz again.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said: “History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea.”
“This Iran deal really is a major walk back for Trump,” said Brett Bruen, a former career diplomat who served under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “I don’t know that he recovers his strength on the global stage after such a significant setback.”
The White House did not immediately respond to an email request for comment on criticism of the deal.
