WASHINGTON DC - As Iran and the United States have reached a preliminary agreement to end the war, with a formal signing ceremony expected in Switzerland on Friday, US representatives from both Republican and Democratic camps on Tuesday offered Rudaw differing assessments of the deal’s details, with both sides acknowledging that key elements remain unclear.
Republican Senator Bill Hagerty said that official details of the deal remain scarce for now. Despite this, he expressed confidence that “we're moving in a direction that's completely different from President [Barack] Obama's [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] JCPOA.”
“The United States is not going to pay Iran up front so that they can go out and facilitate more terrorism in the world,” he noted, adding that Washington aims to “create a dynamic mechanism” under which the Iranian side could “access their own money” only if they comply.
Hagerty detailed that compliance would entail Tehran’s dismantling its nuclear program and “taking very positive steps to make the world safer and move in a direction that is much more like the market economies in the region.”
“The only way Iran is going to see their way out of economic instability” is by implementing reforms aligned with US President Donald Trump’s guidelines, the Republican senator stressed.
For his part, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley also said that the details of the agreement remain unclear, describing them as “a huge question right now” amid what he called “very conflicting descriptions.”
Merkley noted, however, that early indications suggest “the initial deal” is focused on “the US unblocking ports in Iran” and Tehran allowing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. He added that issues still subject to further negotiations include Iran’s “access to frozen funds, the easing of special penalties that are applied to Iran on international trade and to the nuclear issues.”
The remarks come as a senior US administration official on Monday told reporters, including Rudaw, that the memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington has already been signed electronically by President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
“This memorandum provides a few basic things. The first is to provide the structure for how our negotiation, our relationship will operate in the future,” the official noted.
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