Iran and US reach an initial deal to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz but challenges remain

The Unit­ed States and Iran reached an ini­tial agree­ment Mon­day that would ex­tend their shaky cease­fire and lead to the re­open­ing of the Strait of Hor­muz, but sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges re­main to end­ing the war, in­clud­ing whether Is­rael will con­tin­ue its of­fen­sive in Lebanon.

De­tails of the deal have not been made pub­lic. The U.S. said it was signed elec­tron­i­cal­ly on Sun­day but that it will not be im­ple­ment­ed un­til a for­mal sign­ing. Pak­istani Prime Min­is­ter She­hbaz Sharif, a key me­di­a­tor, said that will hap­pen Fri­day in Gene­va. Even if the strait — a cru­cial wa­ter­way for the world’s oil and nat­ur­al gas — ful­ly opens then, it will like­ly take months for the glob­al en­er­gy cri­sis sparked by its clo­sure to ease.

Is­rael joined the U.S. in launch­ing the war on Feb. 28, but it is not par­ty to the deal. The Is­raeli de­fense min­is­ter said Mon­day that the coun­try would not with­draw from land seized in Lebanon, where Is­rael is fight­ing the Iran­ian-backed Hezbol­lah mil­i­tant group.

A spokesman in Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu’s of­fice said Is­rael will con­tin­ue to de­fend it­self against any threat to its se­cu­ri­ty. That alone could scut­tle the deal, since Iran has in­sist­ed any agree­ment to end the war in­clude an end to the fight­ing in Lebanon.

The agree­ment al­so faces oth­er ma­jor chal­lenges. It gives just 60 days to de­cide what to do about Iran’s stock­pile of high­ly en­riched ura­ni­um and its nu­clear pro­gram — which the U.S. and Is­rael wor­ry could be used to build an atom­ic weapon, de­spite Tehran’s in­sis­tence that the pro­gram is peace­ful. It took years for Iran and world pow­ers to ne­go­ti­ate a 2015 agree­ment to rein in Tehran’s nu­clear pro­gram.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump uni­lat­er­al­ly with­drew the U.S. from that ac­cord in his first term, set­ting the stage for the ten­sions that cul­mi­nat­ed in the cur­rent war, which has killed thou­sands across the Mid­dle East, in­clud­ing the top lead­ers of Iran’s theoc­ra­cy, and raised the prices of fu­el, food and oth­er ba­sic goods far be­yond the re­gion.

The Strait of Hor­muz won’t open un­til the deal is signed

The Unit­ed States and Iran reached an ini­tial agree­ment ear­ly Mon­day to open the Strait of Hor­muz and fur­ther ex­tend a shaky cease­fire in the Iran war, po­ten­tial­ly al­low­ing des­per­ate­ly need­ed oil and nat­ur­al gas to reach the glob­al mar­ket.

Ear­ly in the war, Iran­ian at­tacks on ships brought traf­fic in the Strait of Hor­muz — through which a fifth of the world’s oil and nat­ur­al gas passed be­fore the con­flict — to a near stand­still. Trump im­ple­ment­ed a block­ade in re­sponse.

Iran’s deputy for­eign min­is­ter, Kazem Gharib­aba­di, said Iran would not start im­ple­ment­ing the agree­ment un­til af­ter the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny. The U.S. mil­i­tary said the block­ade will re­main in place “pend­ing ex­e­cu­tion” of the deal.

“Do not at­tempt to cross un­til ex­plic­it di­rec­tion is giv­en,” it said Mon­day in an ad­vi­so­ry to mer­chant ships.

Trump, who faced pres­sure to end the war ahead of con­gres­sion­al midterm elec­tions in No­vem­ber, said that “a lot of great things are go­ing to hap­pen in the Mid­dle East right now.”

“Very im­por­tant­ly, the oil is plum­met­ing down, and the stock mar­ket is shoot­ing up like a rock­et to­day,” he said Mon­day at the G7 sum­mit in France.

While the agree­ment pro­vides for the “im­me­di­ate” open­ing of the strait and lift­ing of the block­ade, the process will take time be­cause there are mines in the strait, and ships are un­will­ing to risk tra­vers­ing it, ac­cord­ing to a se­nior U.S. of­fi­cial who spoke to re­porters on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss out­lines of the agree­ment.

De­tails re­main scant but ex­pect­ed soon

A sec­ond se­nior U.S. of­fi­cial told re­porters that de­tails of the agree­ment would be re­leased with­in the next two days.

The mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing in­cludes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­leas­ing Iran’s frozen funds, eas­ing sanc­tions and cre­at­ing a $300 bil­lion fund to re­build Iran — all of which would be tied to Iran meet­ing bench­marks, the of­fi­cial said.

The of­fi­cials said tech­ni­cal talks would be­gin on Fri­day af­ter the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny and that Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance would lead ne­go­ti­a­tions for the U.S.

Is­rael says it won’t with­draw from Lebanon

The suc­cess of the deal rests at least par­tial­ly on what hap­pens be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah in Lebanon. Is­rael’s bomb­ing of Beirut’s south­ern sub­urbs on Sun­day near­ly de­railed the ne­go­ti­a­tions, and a pre­vi­ous at­tack led Iran to fire on Is­rael and Is­rael to fire back.

De­fense Min­is­ter Is­rael Katz said Is­rael plans to stay “in­def­i­nite­ly” in land it holds in Lebanon, Syr­ia and the Gaza Strip. He al­so threat­ened that if Iran at­tacks Is­rael over its strikes in Lebanon, Is­rael will strike Iran with “great force.”

Asked where Is­rael stands on the deal, David Mencer, a spokesman in Ne­tanyahu’s of­fice, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that Is­rael and the U.S. re­main ful­ly aligned on pre­vent­ing Iran from ob­tain­ing nu­clear weapons. But he added that Is­rael will not tol­er­ate at­tacks from Hezbol­lah on its ter­ri­to­ry.

Is­rael and the U.S. be­gan the war ap­par­ent­ly in lock­step, but the war has cre­at­ed deep frac­tures in that close re­la­tion­ship, with Trump ea­ger to end a con­flict that is deeply un­pop­u­lar with the Amer­i­can pub­lic and Ne­tanyahu in­tent on de­stroy­ing Hezbol­lah. Trump ap­pears to have grown in­creas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed with the Is­raeli leader, even oc­ca­sion­al­ly pub­licly in­sult­ing him, in­clud­ing telling The New York Times on Sun­day that he was a “very dif­fi­cult guy.”

Many Lebanese trav­el to check on homes

In a sign of the deal’s fragili­ty, the Lebanese army called on res­i­dents not to rush to re­turn to bor­der vil­lages, say­ing they should fol­low mil­i­tary in­struc­tions be­cause of the dan­ger of “Is­raeli vi­o­la­tions and ag­gres­sion.”

Many Lebanese who had fled fol­low­ing Is­raeli evac­u­a­tion or­ders and in­tense fight­ing were head­ing south, how­ev­er, to check on their homes. Ce­line Fayad, dri­ving south, said she will test how far she could go. Her vil­lage, Aitaroun, is along the bor­der with Is­rael. It was among the first to be oc­cu­pied and lies in ru­ins.

“We were ex­pect­ing to re­turn,” she said. “Thanks to Iran.”

Ali Haidar was among the first to re­turn to Nabatiyeh, the south­ern city at the heart of the lat­est Is­raeli mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions, where many cen­tral build­ings have been re­duced to dust.

“This used to be our home, our child­hood home where we have all of our mem­o­ries. This is where we grew up. Now it’s gone,” Haidar said. “We will re­turn to rub­ble and sand. It’s bet­ter than be­ing dis­placed.”

Hezbol­lah, mean­while, cred­it­ed Iran with a “ma­jor achieve­ment” in reach­ing the agree­ment, which it said could lead to “the full lib­er­a­tion of our land, the re­turn of our pris­on­ers to their home­land and fam­i­lies,” and re­con­struc­tion of war-dev­as­tat­ed ar­eas.

Along with prais­ing the deal, the mil­i­tant group said it was com­mit­ted to re­sist­ing Is­rael “un­til full with­draw­al is achieved.”

World lead­ers wel­come the deal

De­spite the un­cer­tain­ties, world lead­ers from Eu­rope to Chi­na wel­comed the agree­ment. French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron, who is host­ing Trump and oth­er world lead­ers at a Group of Sev­en sum­mit this week, said France and oth­er West­ern part­ners are “ready to take ac­tion very quick­ly” to help re­store nor­mal ship­ping traf­fic in the strait once the U.S. and Iran agree to such a mis­sion.

Oth­ers have ex­pressed cau­tion that the deal re­mains ten­ta­tive. Lux­em­bourg’s for­eign min­is­ter, Xavier Bet­tel, not­ed: “It’s a long time till Fri­day.” —DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)

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Sto­ry by JON GAM­BRELL, ELE­NA BE­CA­TOROS and MICHELLE L. PRICE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press
Ele­na Be­ca­toros re­port­ed from Athens, Greece. Michelle L. rice re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mu­nir Ahmed in Is­lam­abad; Will Weis­sert and Aamer Mad­hani in Wash­ing­ton; Ju­lia Frankel in Jerusalem; Ab­by Sewell and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut; Na­jib Jobain in Do­ha, Qatar; Melanie Lid­man in Tel Aviv, Is­rael; and Sylvie Cor­bet in Evian-les-Bains, France, con­tributed to this re­port.