* The U.S. agrees to release $25 billion of Iran’s frozen assets, including via direct cash transfers, cooperation among regional countries, and financial credit lines.
* Washington, in coordination with its regional allies, would prepare a reconstruction and development plan for Iran, to be negotiated and agreed with Tehran within 60 days.
What the US gets:
* Tehran agrees that it will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons.
* Pending a final agreement, Iran would maintain the current status of its nuclear programme, refraining from further uranium enrichment and expansion of nuclear facilities.
* The United States agrees to allow Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium on Iranian soil under a future comprehensive agreement.
* Iran’s nuclear programme, uranium enrichment activities and mechanisms for handling its stockpile of highly enriched uranium would be negotiated within 60 days of the memorandum and addressed in a final agreement.
> Tehran agrees that it will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons.
Of course they do. They have always said they don’t want nuclear weapons while pursuing them relentlessly.
> Iran’s nuclear programme, uranium enrichment activities and mechanisms for handling its stockpile of highly enriched uranium would be negotiated within 60 days of the memorandum and addressed in a final agreement.
If that is still to be discussed, then what have they been discussing so far? That has always been the main issue.
> If that is still to be discussed, then what have they been discussing so far? That has always been the main issue.
If the agreement means Iran seriously agrees to dilute (which boils down to destroying) it's nuclear stockpile, with UN or US or ... witnesses, that's pretty damn new.
Iran hasn't agreed to that. United States agrees to allow Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium on Iranian soil under a future comprehensive agreement.
Trump released Iran's frozen assets, in return for them opening the straight and thereby dropping oil prices before the midterm elections.
Reminder, the reason Trump hated the Obama deal was because he construed it as paying Iran not to develop nuclear weapons. Obama was paying Iran with the money from Iran's frozen assets. Trump's deal gives them that money, and has no nuclear agreement.
He didn't hate the Obama deal, he hated Obama therefore everything he does has to be criticized and torn down. If that deal had Iran paying the US, Trump would have said the color of the money was no good. And his supporters would eat it up.
Trump hasn’t (so far) demonstrated the ability to stop Israel from bombing and invading Lebanon, so I’m not sure what we can hope will change before Netanyahu leaves office.
The US' limitations in its ability to project power have been exposed. Having American bases in the middle east has been shown to be nothing but a liability for host countries. And Iran has proven that it can withstand anything the US is willing to throw at it, and hit back hard, over a relatively prolonged period.
And Iran has shown that its constitution is strong and power succession is effective even after a massive decapitation strike. There was seemingly zero turmoil, control appears to have been maintained without issue.
And Iran's non nuclear option of controlling the strait has been tested andd shown to be highly effective.
And Iran has gained significant operational experience with its massive stores of drones and missles.
And the US has lost multiple billion dollar intelligence installations in the region.
And Americans have been made aware of the Israel lobby like never before, and Trump is in a very difficult position heading into the midterms.
This completely ignores the shareholder value to the military industrial complex and the truth machine value of prediction markets from the not-insider traders.
which is of course the real kicker, The Gulf states are going to pay for the adventure and deal with an emboldened Iran and their damaged economies and infrastructure. Having US bases in the region has turned from a security guarantee into a disaster, the implications of this are pretty obvious.
...and then you woke up and realised that Iran never allowed those inspectors to inspect the actually important facilities and started removing inspectors from the country in 2023 under Biden.
During the time of JCPOA inspectors had access to where they wanted to go (sometimes with friction, sure) and were able to place tamper resistant / tamper revealing instrumentation, air filters, and spectrometers - effectively creating a data record that could place a stochastic cap on {enrichment level, volume}.
After Trump ripped up that agreement during his first term, that was no longer the case - leading to your 2023 statement.
Biden was elected _after_ Trump broke the deal so it's unclear why you think that tells us anything about what would have happened had the United States honored the treaty.
The crisis exists because Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. That's the root issue.
JCPOA was never a permanent solution. Under JCPOA, Iran agreed to temporarily cap enrichment for 15 years until 2030. After which, Iran could enrich freely.
JCPOA had no extension framework, the deal could not be extended without being renegotiated. And Iranian officials refused to agree to permanent enrichment caps, they said the 15-year sunset on enrichment was a non-negotiable.
Are the terms of the deal public yet? If they're essentially a return to the status quo ante bellum, that would be a pretty embarrassing conclusion for the US (and would presumably further harden any belief within Iran that the only permanent regime-preserving solution involves accelerating the process of obtaining nuclear weapons).
>According to remarks carried by the Tasnim news agency, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said negotiations for a final deal will be held during a 60-day period, after verifying that the US implemented its commitments under the deal, including ending hostilities, lifting the blockade, and releasing frozen assets.
So, it's an even worse position for the US than before launching the war.
Didn’t Iran consider their previous US negotiations a sham? Why would they believe them this time? Feels like the US wants to approach them with these deals, reneg, and once Iran is like we don’t want anymore deals, then the US can point to them and be like, see they don’t want peace.
For one thing, the US has agreed to give Iran $12 billion of their frozen assets before negotiations start, and another $12 billion during the 60 day negotiation period. When you repeatedly bomb the other side while prior negotiations were ongoing, before having to conclude that a negotiated settlement is the only way out of this, you have to make big concessions to even get the other side to the negotiating table.
Iran was fully abiding by the JCPOA (Obama Iran deal) until Trump pulled out in his first term. Trump hates Obama so that was entirely out of spite.
What is surprising is how co-opted the Biden admin was by Israel, that they didn't even bother to even consider reentering it despite it being a Democratic party "win" when it was first announced.
No, they tried to negotiate a new deal, not go back to the one they had agreed to. Why would Iran trust any new negotiations?
Iran was naive enough to trust the US twice in the last year and HAD THEIR NEGOTIATING TEAM BOMBED! I'm shocked they even trust the US to hold up to the deal they signed today. I'm guessing US concessions on frozen assets was just too much to pass up.
It looks like it is more an MoU than a deal, and I think that allows Trump the cover to drip feed out how humiliating it is, because this isn't the kind of band-aid you rip off all at once.
If I were a betting man I would bet that between now and Friday there will be too much news coverage of just how humiliating this is for the USA, how bad a deal it is, and how much of failure it is, and Trump himself will pull out of the deal. This has, allegedly, happened at least once.
But Iran now seem to be a bit better schooled in how to actually get him to agree, so perhaps they will be persuaded to smile a shit-eating grin while he takes a victory lap, and simply keep the most humiliating details of it under wraps until he signs.
How long it is before Trump claims to renegotiate it, who knows. Just the other day Trump said he might not renew USMCA — his own prior great achievement of loudly renegotiating NAFTA to be not significantly worse.
The conclusion has long been embarassing unless we live under a rock.
The US president has been played like a fool by the Israelis and Iran has inflicted a humiliating defeat to the US and its allies by leveraging cheap asymmetric warfare.
I think this war's first phase was clearly in Israel's favor, insofar as Israel's strategic goal is neutralizing Iran as a peer adversary. But the latter phases have not really gone how they (= Netanyahu) want/s; the ideal end state for Israel is an enormous civilian infrastructure cost to Iran that would subtract from military budgeting, but that isn't what the deal suggests.
(Intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure is, of course, a war crime.)
Israel seems to have also lost out because any further war crimes they commit will get Trump angry, he's desperate to keep Iran from returning fire and further wrecking his midterms.
But heck, if I were Iran I'd be wary after November. With Russia-style election rigging and spineless congress, Trump-Hegseth might resume the war crimes...
DoW under Trump has basically disfigured Iran militarily and at this point their leadership will have to be outright mad and suicidal or both to pursue a nuclear weapon ..
There have been persistent rumours that Iran will be allowed to charge new "environmental fees" for access, "to protect the ecosystem of the Strait" or somesuch.
(Secretary of War and former Fox News weekend anchor Pete Hegseth was on the news just this evening saying that the USA has been in control of the Strait the whole time, so I think the USA is arguing against your (correct) characterisation of the situation.)
“Art of the deal.” Thousands of deaths and tens to hundreds of billions of dollars borrowed and spent to be in a worse position than before this started.
Iranians have said they cannot charge a "toll" according to international law, but they can charge a "fee". Charging a fee for maintanance, environment or security is fine, so it will be just a different branding to the "toll". Personally I think they should charge an environmental fee with the amount of traffic going through there.
If I understand 'jeffbee correctly, I think they mean that Iran now has practical evidence that it can gum up the strait and therefore extract political concessions from it, even if they don't literally result in tolling.
(In other words, every barrel of oil that passes through the straight will now have an $X risk surcharge on it, whether or not that surcharge ends up in Iran's coffers.)
Trump also said he would refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve "right to the top" in 6 weeks and, instead, emptied it to its lowest level ever. He also said foreign investment in the United States would rise to 22 trillion dollars, but instead total foreign investment weakened to below $300 billion in 2025. Oh, and he also said tariffs were cutting the deficit by 25%, while he instead managed the deficit to a slightly higher level, even before counting the Iran War.
> The most alarming aspect of 60% enrichment is how close it brings a country to weapons-grade material 4344. The enrichment work required to move from 60% to 90% is substantially less than the work needed to reach 60% from natural uranium 4546. This means a country with 60% enriched uranium stockpiles could potentially produce weapons-grade material in a matter of weeks or even days.
This would be a lot more concerning if it wasn't widely known that Israel also illegally holds nuclear weapons of its own and therefore should have been sanctioned by the US for decades. Not having nukes is how Iran got here in the first place - the POTUS unilaterally withdrawing from their agreement and bombing them in the middle of negotiations. For all the portrayals of the Iranian government as "lunatics" over the years, getting to nuclear ASAP is the only logical move for a country in Iran's position - just look at how the US went back on its sabre rattling against North Korea once they demonstrated nuclear capabilities.
You don't have to think the Iranian government is in any way "good" but there's literally no logical reason for them not to desperately try to get their hands on nuclear weapons at this point. They have no reason to trust the West to ever follow through on any promises again.
You left out the part that they went past the 3.5% after Trump pulled out of the deal. While they were in it, they were complying fully as per IAEA and the US State department themselves.
I didn't leave out anything. I was making a factual statement that the Iranian nuclear program had already been "accelerated" to a point where objectively, with the engineering expertise they doubtlessly have, they could have potentially built a bomb within weeks or months, as the most difficult and time-consuming part was already done, which is why nonproliferation proponents get so upset about that level of enrichment.
Whether this is Trump's or Biden's or Joe Rogan's or a space alien's fault is for other commenters to discuss. I do not find the politics interesting. Nuclear science is interesting.
> they could have potentially built a bomb within weeks or months...
Come on now Netanyahu. They've been saying that for last 30 years, no one believes that anymore! The fact is Iran was adhering to the JCPOA and it could have been a viable solution to all this for years to come, until Trump pulled out.
I’m an Iranian in my 40s, and the regime and Western countries have been negotiating for most of my life. I remember being in high school when the first nuclear talks began, and ever since, it has been a never-ending series of talks, understandings, and plans without any real conclusion. I remember there were cases when they talked for weeks, and their main achievement was agreement on the time and place of the next negotiations. Today’s “deal” is no different. No party is releasing an official text; apparently, it’s not a real deal but a memorandum of understanding outlining a plan for further talks over the next 60 days. Another 60 days on top of the last two decades.
And all of these have only bought time and money for the regime to continue its nuclear ambitions, terrorism plans, and oppress the people of Iran, including almost daily executions of innocent protestors during the last few months as these negotiations went on.
The truth is, it won’t be possible to solve this issue with this approach. You can’t get a snake to sign a document to agree not to be poisonous anymore.
The original Obama deal kept Iran isolated and their nuclear stockpile limited. It didn't do anything for the Iranian people and that's tragic but until trump it wasn't the west's problem. The decades of negotiations was to everyone's benefit (except the Iranian people)
Now it is the wests problem (with the strait) but even now no one is going to send an army to Iran.
It actually does, how about not dying from US/Israeli bombs? People tend to forget there is a human cost to this and not only oil and money involved. There are 3.5k people dead in Iran many more injured. The US killed indian sailors in the last couple of days, guess the remaining ones will be happy to not live with this danger.
> Reopening the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days "under Iranian arrangements"
Oh my goodness. So it stays closed for the better part of a month (or more, who knows), then opens up with each ship paying Iran for passage. I very much look forward to how this will be spun as some kind of a "win" for the United States.
We'll see if it happens. Quote: "mediators will facilitate a series of meetings this week. These pre-implementation discussions will lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony." It's concepts of a plan all over again
For sure, but the eventually-settled-upon rationale was some kind of nuclear deterrence. To walk away with Iran (likely) to maintain its uranium stockpile + possible toll control of the strait is such a complete and utter self-own.
Is this going to end Israel’s offensive into Lebanon? It isn’t clear. It may be that Israel has permanently expanded its borders into the ethnically cleansed southern Lebanon just like it has into Syria recently. This is what Katz is saying:
It's an agreement between the US and Iran. Israel will defend its people, whatever that takes, as any right-minded nation should, no matter how dispicable the tactics used by the other side.
It's a war between Israel and the US vs Iran that was literally initiated by the US after a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu.
Also Israel is a rogue state that has been committing war crimes including genocide and is engaging in expansionist wars worse at this point than Russia's. It's in everyone's interest that Israel be either stopped or undergo a regime change that abandons Apartheid and creates a multicultural Western democracy.
I wonder how the stock markets will react tomorrow. I know someone who turned $6k into $150k by buying options on war related news. The logic is that the markets will almost certainly go up, so bet big at a time like this.
It sounded like an easy way to lose $6k, but maybe the upside is worth the risk. I don’t have any experience to know whether this is a sufficiently good bet though.
Institutional investors get to trade outside of hours that most ordinary people can't; presuming that this is net positive for markets, they will already be up when the bell rings.
It's just a 60-day cease fire extension, according to the New York Times.
Trump posted something on Truth Social. There's no announcement on the U.S. Department of State site. That's full of a deal between the US Government and the Ultimate Fighting Championship people.
Compare with the April 8th ceasefire.[2]
Al Jazeera, which reports on this in detail because their readership is in the target area, is trying to figure it out.[3]
Peace - in whatever form is something the world desperately needs at this point.
Having said that, I'll give it three days until Israel does some shit and undos all of this.
I have it on good authority there are still ww1 mines in the North Sea. Mines drift. At best you know the co-ordinates of where you released them from a ship.
It's the last bump before I liquidate all my stocks. I predict that the crash will come at the end or the beginning of the next president which is likely democrat.
Not that it's democrat's fault but democrat is more disciplined
I have some thoughts on that. It’s possible that the current administration’s lack of oversight has artificially propped up the stock market. If the next president decides to return to a more traditional rules based structure, the market will probably react very poorly. US debt is also getting more expensive and interest is ballooning.
Making the country less desirable to the most skilled immigrants and eroding the capabilities of the strongest research universities will also mean there is probably hell to pay in the medium term.
The swing of the market based on the president's crazy tweets is just insane. This cannot go on for much longer. I will be parking my money at a safer place
Time in the market beats timing the market, bears have predicted (large number) out of the last (smaller number) recessions, etc. None of this is novel. "Predicting" a stock crash due to political reasons is effectively just a fancy restatement of anti-those-politics views; and it isn't substantive, especially when the prediction comes with a years-long window.
I think it may happen before then. That's why I'm thinking of liquidating it soon-ish. Trump is doing too much crazy things. He cannot prop up the market for that long.
I plan to put most of the money in US t-bill (4 week) to earn 3% for now.
It's a ridiculous situation that requires ridicule. And further I will bet you (or polymarket) that someone will nominate trump for the Nobel prize for this deal.
What are the odds of the optimal deal being reached on Trump's birthday (Eastern Time)? Who knows, maybe US stalled before, and/or gave a little extra concession to conclude today.
You are probably right it was timed deliberately this way, this is why the Iranians also
didn't rush it ...
> Iran waited until the clock passed midnight local time to finalize the agreement, because it did not want the momentous occasion to coincide with President Trump’s birthday on Sunday, according to two Iranian officials who could not be identified because of the matter’s sensitivity. The seven-and-half-hour time difference allowed both Tehran and Washington to claim their preferred version of when the deal was finalized. President Trump had said it would be on Sunday, and Iran had said it would be on a later day.[0]
Trump says "The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete." The deal opens the Strait of Hormuz to all, while leaving the thorniest nuclear issues for another day.
According to the NY times, its a 60 day ceasefire on all fronts, and a return to pre-war status on issues like the (blockade, tolls, nuclear program, sanctions) starting this coming Friday. Also on Friday, a new round of negotiations will begin to discuss these issues.
So basically, both sides agreed to go back to the pre-war status quo for 60 days while negotiations continue.
Except one thing so far, apparently Trump has agreed to unfreeze Iranian financial assets.
Remember: the reason Trump said Obama's nuclear agreement was terrible was because Obama was "paying the Iranians to not develop nuclear weapons". What Obama did, was pay them out of these frozen assets. Which trump just gave them back for free, and without a nuclear deal.
We had a once in a lifetime opportunity to completely destroy the theocratic regime and we did not finish the job. This "deal" (or what transpired of it) is pathetic and will only allow the mullahs to rearm and come back stronger in the future. We will live to regret not resuming combat operations and weakening the regime until it isn't a threat to anyone.
That would require an invading force. Not worth it when we could keep Iran isolated and under sanctions and under nuclear inspections by doing nothing.
Being attacked strengthens a nations unity, strengthens regimes, and eliminates room for dissent - did you miss 9/11? Oct 7th? Pearl harbour? The blitz?
I don’t know how this is worse for the US or the World. Iran’s leadership and military was decapitated. It’s in the best interest of US, Europe and Israel and the Middle East. The nuclear program had a huge setback.
What are the counter arguments to these facts if we really end up in peace with Iran along with the bad actors gone too?
if the strait actually reopens and Iran actually ships the enriched uranium out of the country this is a reasonable outcome imo. My concern centers on the fact that neither of these two outcomes are guaranteed by a long shot at this point.
Key bullets:
What Iran gets:
* The U.S. agrees to release $25 billion of Iran’s frozen assets, including via direct cash transfers, cooperation among regional countries, and financial credit lines.
* Washington, in coordination with its regional allies, would prepare a reconstruction and development plan for Iran, to be negotiated and agreed with Tehran within 60 days.
What the US gets:
* Tehran agrees that it will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons.
* Pending a final agreement, Iran would maintain the current status of its nuclear programme, refraining from further uranium enrichment and expansion of nuclear facilities.
* The United States agrees to allow Iran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium on Iranian soil under a future comprehensive agreement.
* Iran’s nuclear programme, uranium enrichment activities and mechanisms for handling its stockpile of highly enriched uranium would be negotiated within 60 days of the memorandum and addressed in a final agreement.