US officials reveal details of Iran agreement after days of secrecy

LAST UPDATE | 16 hrs ago

SENIOR US OFFICIALS have dictated the memorandum of understanding with Iran to journalists after days of secrecy, and Iran suggested that its deal with the United States could be signed by presidents Donald Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian.

Such a signing ceremony would represent a major step for the two countries, which saw diplomatic relations break off in 1980 over the US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to read the draft, which Iran has not released, ahead of formal signing ceremony set for Friday.

According to the officials, the draft agreement includes a new “minimum” standard for downblending of highly enriched Iranian uranium and has provisions to ensure the “territorial integrity” of Lebanon after Israel’s latest attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanese territory.

In return, the US will move to waive, but not eliminate, some wide-ranging sanctions against Iran once the deal is signed.

The US draft of the agreement also secures toll-free passage of the Strait of Hormuz for only 60 days, and it does not preclude fees in future, the officials said.

Trump earlier said an agreement with Iran could be signed as early as Thursday. 

The US president was speaking at a long and somewhat rambling press conference following the conclusion of the G7 summit in France. 

It has been announced that the war will end on all fronts, including Lebanon, and the vital Strait of Hormuz will reopen, but little information was offered on the thorny question of Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Trump said that under the agreement, Iran has agreed “that they will neither produce nor procure a nuclear weapon” and that “technical discussions on the removal of all stockpiles of enriched materials will begin immediately”.

He also said if his war continued, it could have destroyed the economy. 

“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you’d have kept this going, it would have happened,” he said. 

He said that every time the US talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market “shot up like a rocket.”

He went on to say that the stock market is “more brilliant than anybody there is, other than me”. 

‘US will not fund Iran’

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the agreement includes a $300 billion (€258.8 billion) private fund designed to trigger investment into Iran.

Without giving further details, Trump called the report “fake news” and said that any relief Iran receives under the agreement will be “based on merit”. He emphasised that it “won’t be from” the US. 

“We don’t have to give them anything, but people might want to invest. They need investment because we did $1 trillion, maybe $2 trillion-worth of damage, so somebody’s going to have to help them out”.

He echoed remarks he made earlier in the day, saying that if Iran don’t honour the agreement, “we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honour it”.

“It’s amazing what bombs can do,” he said.

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He also said it is his hope that the agreement “will be the beginning of a much larger deal all across the Middle East”.

Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the joint US-Israeli bombing of Iran had spared his country from “nuclear annihilation” and pledged that “with an agreement or without one, Iran will not have nuclear weapons”.

It came after Israeli politicians criticised the agreement, which Israel was not part of negotiating. 

Israel ‘could behave better’

Trump said Washington “did send a copy” of the accord to Israel and insisted he maintains a good relationship with Netanyahu amid reports of tensions. 

But he reaffirmed his criticism of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying “they (Israel) could do a much better job”.

He said Netanyahu is “a very good man” who “happens to get a little excited sometimes”

“When two drones shot into desert and drop harmlessly, you don’t have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better,” he said, adding that he “feels bad” for Lebanon. 

Speaking at the summit earlier, Trump said the deal is “not final”. 

“It’s a memorandum of understanding, and if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them,” he said during a press conference alongside Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 

“If they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head.”

Trump said Iran had “misbehaved for 47 years,” referring to the Islamic republic, which was founded in the Islamic revolution after the ousting of the shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a US ally, in 1979.

He also slammed the agreement that former US president Barack Obama reached with Iran in 2015 – which Trump tore up during his first term in office. 

He told reporters that the Democrat handed Iran “billions and billions of dollars” and referred to money being flown to Iran on a Boeing 747, adding that Obama “tried to bribe his way out of it”. 

“You know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama and they said ‘he’s a stupid son of a bitch’,” he said. 

Obama’s agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – also known as JCPOA, or the Iran Nuclear Deal – was signed by Iran, the European Union and the five permanent UN Security Council members China, Russia, France, the UK and the US. 

As part of the deal, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear ambitions and allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its sites in exchange for sanctions relief. 

The money given to Iran on the plane, some $400 million which was largely in Swiss francs, was Iranian assets that had been frozen decades earlier. But the payment coincided with the release of four Americans imprisoned in Tehran, which raised questions and led to criticism in the US. 

It remains to be seen how Trump’s deal will differ from the 2015 agreement. 

With reporting from © AFP 2026 and PA

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