US President Donald Trump yesterday said he had told his representatives not to rush into any deal with Iran, as his administration played down hopes of an imminent breakthrough in the three-month-old war that had been raised a day earlier.
The US blockade on Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz would ‘remain in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed’, Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Both sides must take their time and get it right,” he added.
There was no immediate response from Iran’s government. But Tasnim news agency, which is linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said the US was still obstructing parts of a potential deal, including Tehran’s demand for the release of frozen funds.
A day earlier, Trump said Washington and Iran had ‘largely negotiated’ a memorandum of understanding on a peace deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which before the conflict carried one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
The two sides remain at odds on several difficult issues, such as Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel’s war in Lebanon with Hizbollah and Tehran’s demands for the lifting of sanctions and the release of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in foreign banks.
A senior Trump administration official told reporters an agreement would not be signed on Sunday, saying that the Iranian system did not move fast enough. But he outlined what he said were the latest contours of what was being negotiated.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Iran had agreed ‘in principle’ to open the Strait of Hormuz, in exchange for the United States lifting its naval blockade, and to dispose of Tehran’s highly enriched uranium.
He said the US understood Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei had endorsed the broad template of the deal.
There was no immediate confirmation from Iran or elaboration on what an ‘in principle’ agreement meant.
The US official said Washington envisioned first re-opening the strait and lifting the US naval blockade. Negotiating the details of the nuclear measures would take more time, he said.
He pushed back on suggestions that Iran has not accepted disposing of its stockpiled enriched uranium. “It’s a question about how,” the official said.
A second senior administration official said that the proposed framework would give negotiators 60 days to reach a final deal.
Iranian sources had told Reuters that in future stages, ‘feasible formulas’ could be found to resolve the dispute over its highly enriched uranium stockpile, including diluting the material under the supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog.
Iran has long denied US and Israeli accusations that it is pursuing nuclear weapons and says it has a right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, although the purity it has achieved far exceeds that needed for power generation.
Trump, whose approval ratings have been hit by the war’s impact on US energy prices and who has faced congressional efforts to curb his war powers, has repeatedly played up the prospect of an agreement to end the conflict that the US and Israel started on February 28. A tenuous ceasefire has been in place since early April.
As details of the possible agreement emerged over the weekend, critics including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Democratic legislators argued that it offered little beyond the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama, from which Trump withdrew during his first term.
Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the deal’s reported outlines would amount to little more than ‘the pre-war status quo’ with Iran.
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