The basic structure of the US-Iran deal reached late on Sunday – a return to the prewar status quo – has been on offer from Iran for more than a month. So has the specific architecture: an immediate unwinding of the consequences of the US-Israeli war through the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and a deferral of the actual negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme, the ostensible cause of the war. The concept of a 60-day ceasefire to resolve these issues has also been a fixture for more than a month.
But it has taken the mounting pressure on the US and Iranian economies for both sides to recognise politically that a return to all-out war was unlikely to resolve the impasse, and if so, compromises would have to be struck.
Both sides had to relent on the complex issues holding up a deal: the future governance of the strait of Hormuz, the economic sweeteners – including sanctions relief – that needed to be offered to Iran, and the agenda for the deferred nuclear talks, including what preconditions would be set and how much ambiguity could be tolerated.
Iranian negotiators will now travel to Doha to try to work out some of the shaky implementation aspects of the deal before a signing ceremony on Friday in Geneva – the city US negotiators left on 28 February, the day the war began, when a far superior nuclear offer to now was being offered by the Iranians.
What the deal doesn’t say
With differing texts of the agreement still circulating, it is easier to describe what is definitely missing. Top of the list is Iran’s “unconditional surrender”. Regime change has also disappeared as a goal. Instead, Donald Trump on Sunday lavished praise on Iran’s new leadership team.
The agreement contains no restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missiles, something the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted would be part of the deal as recently as 11 June. There is no commitment to release political prisoners amid the continued round-ups and executions. The human rights activist and Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi is not a beneficiary of this memorandum. There is also no reining-in of Iran’s proxy forces. Support for Hamas, the Houthis, the Iraqi PMU (Popular Mobilisation Units) and Hezbollah will remain as a part, but no longer the centrepiece, of Iran’s security strategy.
Indeed, Iran insisted that a ceasefire in Lebanon, protecting Hezbollah, was integral to the deal. Iran overlooked Netanyahu’s last-minute efforts to upend the deal by relaunching attacks on south Beirut because the deal was so close, and Netanyahu’s defiance was forcing Trump into further concessions.
But the earliest test of the agreement will be what Netanyahu does next in Lebanon, and what Iran will expect Trump to do if Netanyahu, politically cornered as never before in his career, insists on his “sovereign right” to protect northern Israel by pursuing Hezbollah. No memorandum can quite capture the consequences of the US failing to keeping its ally in check.
The complications over what happens next
The deal is built around graduated steps, and verification by the other party before a next step is taken. Iran is determined to avoid a repeat of 2018 when it had made wide-ranging commitments on its nuclear programme under the Obama-era 2015 deal, but did not receive any economic relief before the US unilaterally pulled out. This time everything must be verified, including a ceasefire in Lebanon, before other steps can start.
The opening and clearest unconditional step is that the US lifts its blockade of Iranian ports. In return, Iran has agreed to reopen the strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping from Friday without restriction, with the intention – subject to demining – of traffic reaching pre-war levels within 30 days.
But here the interpretation starts. A reference to “the future administration of maritime services” by Iran and Oman was inserted into the text late on. Does this mean Iran and Oman, stewards of the south side of the strait, can claim after 60 days of free navigation for ships that they are entitled to “impose”, rather than offer, services for a fee to ships? Will Iran be able in any new way to impose route restrictions on shipping on environmental and safety grounds? Yvette Cooper, the UK foreign secretary, spoke to her opposite number in Oman within hours of the memorandum being signed, which shows how vital Muscat will be to the unresolved future stewardship of the waterway.
In an interview over the weekend Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, said: “The navy will do the same thing it is doing now. We are currently providing services in the strait of Hormuz: safety services, navigation services, and security services. It is clear that services are not free anywhere in the world and there is a fee for these services.”
He emphasised: “Only Iran and Oman have the right to receive these fees and no other party can decide about it. This process is in place now and will remain in place in any future agreement.”
The nuclear file, sanctions relief and the Iranian economy
As to the parameters of the nuclear talks, Iran has in advance made no new concession in agreeing an agenda. The agreement repeats that Iran has no desire to make or acquire a nuclear weapon. Trump sets store by this statement, but it has been said for decades by Iranian leaders. The question is whether the commitment is verifiable.
The US appears to abandon its requirement that all uranium stockpiles are exported to the US and no domestic enrichment can take place. The agreement suggests the talks can include the option of uranium enriched to 60% being down-blended to 3.67%, sufficient only for civilian purposes, inside Iran. It also holds out the possibility that Iran could be allowed to enrich only to that that level in future.
In an interview with the New York Times yesterday, Trump hinted he might be willing to accept a 15-year moratorium on enrichment. If the US had adopted these positions previously, war probably could have been averted.
The fate of these nuclear talks will depend, as they have for two decades, on the practical economic incentives Iran is given in terms of sanctions relief. Some in Iran – and here the negotiators may be on their weakest ground – are presenting the deal as the start of an economic bonanza. History suggests lifting the multilayered network of sanctions imposed by Congress, presidential executive orders, the EU and the UN will be hard since they are so intertwined.
The US says the only immediate sanctions relief is for the 6o days of the ceasefire on Iran’s oil and petrochemical exports. Iran also insists it has found a way for half its assets frozen overseas – $12bn (£8.9bn) – to be returned without restrictions on how it can spend the cash. Thereafter, subject to unspecified progress other primary and secondary US sanctions will be lifted, as well as EU and UN sanctions. Finally, the US and “regional partners” will create a programme for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran with minimum funding of $300bn (£223bn). But this fund is not a compensation fund and does not appear obligatory.
Iran has a 60-day holiday from war, but not from the economic malaise that has gripped it.
