The Trump administration has released the text of its 14-point agreement with Iran, claiming it delivered a “major win” for the United States – even as it made significant political and financial concessions to Tehran to reopen the strait of Hormuz and prevent a “worldwide depression”.
In extraordinary remarks on Wednesday, Donald Trump went from threatening Iran with a new wave of attacks to suggesting the country had basic rights to enrich uranium for civilian use, that he would not pressure Tehran to abandon its ballistic missiles programme and the US was “going to have to give back” billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.
Those remarks, as well as the full text of the agreement – which was hailed by the Hezbollah chief, Naim Qassem, as a “great victory” – are likely to fuel anger in Israel and among hardliners in the Republican party who had urged Trump not to make a deal with Tehran.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said: “The agreement is a record of US failure. People will see it and judge.”
Defending the deal, Trump said no US president had ever been as tough on Iran as him, and “there is nothing as smart as the market – and the market loves it”.
Trump said that “the alternative would be a worldwide depression”, arguing that if he had not struck a deal, “the strait [of Hormuz] would never have been opened. They don’t like floating billion-dollar ships up and down the strait when their rockets are flying overhead and there are mines all over the place.”
Senior administration officials said the deal would help prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, pointing to an agreement to discuss down-blending its 440kg stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which could be further enriched for use in a nuclear weapon. Trump has said he was open to the stockpile being diluted inside Iran under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“At a minimum, the enriched stockpile will be destroyed by down-blending,” said the senior administration official who read the text of the agreement. “We will push for more than that, but the fact that they’re conceding to that is a major, major win for the United States of America.”
Trump said the deal to end the months-long conflict, which has cost thousands of lives and devastated the world economy, would formally be signed “shortly”.
Iran had suggested that the deal could be signed by Trump and the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in what would mark the highest-level meeting between the two country’s leaders since the diplomatic break of the 1980s. Initially, the US vice-president, JD Vance, was expected to sign the deal at a ceremony in Geneva on Friday.