The interim US-Iran deal leaves the fate of Tehran’s nuclear program still to be negotiated

The in­ter­im deal be­tween the Unit­ed States and Iran is sup­posed to ush­er in a two-month pe­ri­od that would ad­dress the most di­vi­sive is­sue be­tween the long­time ad­ver­saries — Tehran’s nu­clear pro­gram.

Pre­vent­ing Iran from at­tain­ing a nu­clear bomb is a key rea­son that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said he launched the war along­side Is­rael in Feb­ru­ary, but the ten­ta­tive agree­ment he has trum­pet­ed leaves lit­tle run­way to ne­go­ti­ate the long-run­ning stick­ing point. The pre­vi­ous nu­clear pact be­tween Iran and world pow­ers, from which Trump pulled the U.S. in his first term, took many months to ne­go­ti­ate.

Un­der terms of the ini­tial deal, Iran would im­me­di­ate­ly take steps to re­open the Strait of Hor­muz to glob­al oil ship­ments and would be al­lowed to sell its oil with­out re­stric­tions, U.S. and re­gion­al of­fi­cials say.

The ac­cord, due to be of­fi­cial­ly signed Fri­day in Switzer­land, al­so en­vi­sions Iran re­ceiv­ing at least $300 bil­lion to re­build af­ter the war and says the U.S. would work to end all Amer­i­can and U.N. sanc­tions im­posed on Tehran. That is if a fi­nal agree­ment ad­dress­ing Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram is reached af­ter the open­ing of a 60-day pe­ri­od for talks.

There is deep scep­ti­cism among both Re­pub­li­can and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers, pro-Is­rael ad­vo­cates and Is­rael it­self that the deal is re­al­is­tic, work­able or would have any ef­fect on nu­clear talks.

“My scep­ti­cism is Iran it­self. What would a good deal look like? No en­rich­ment. And we’ll see if we can get there,” Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, R-S.C., a close Trump al­ly and long­time Iran hawk, said Tues­day. “But whether or not we can get phase 2, I don’t know.”

A nu­clear deal takes com­mit­ment to the de­tails

David Schenker, di­rec­tor of the Arab Pol­i­tics Pro­gram at the Wash­ing­ton In­sti­tute for Near East Pol­i­cy, said “this ad­min­is­tra­tion has proven that it has a hard time keep­ing its at­ten­tion on these is­sues.”

Schenker, who served as as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of state for Near East­ern Af­fairs in the first Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, ques­tioned whether the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion would have the where­with­al to reach a nu­clear deal even if the agree­ment is signed Fri­day.

“This is the kind of thing that re­quires dogged at­ten­tion, at­ten­tion to de­tail and nu­mer­ous tech­ni­cal ex­perts in­volved,” he said. “Trump los­es his at­ten­tion, moves on, and so does the ad­min­is­tra­tion. It’s like they don’t un­der­stand Iran’s strat­e­gy. They didn’t get it the first time, or the sec­ond.”

The Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion has main­tained its con­fi­dence. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance said Tues­day that much of the tech­ni­cal de­tails must be ne­go­ti­at­ed but that the U.S. must see ac­tion for Iran to re­ceive in­cen­tives such as sanc­tions re­lief.

“Our plan un­der this deal is, again, the Ira­ni­ans are get­ting a lot of ben­e­fits so long as they dis­man­tle that nu­clear weapons pro­gram,” Vance told Meg­yn Kel­ly on her pod­cast.

“Peo­ple al­ways ask me, ‘Why do you be­lieve it this time?’ I don’t be­lieve them,” he added. “I don’t trust any­thing that any­body says. I trust what peo­ple do. And the way this deal is struc­tured is that as they do more, they re­ceive more. As they do less, they re­ceive less.”

Iran has long main­tained its nu­clear pro­gram is peace­ful.

It took over a year and a half to get the pre­vi­ous nu­clear deal

The 2015 Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Ac­tion, or JCPOA, took more than 18 months to ne­go­ti­ate, start­ing with se­cret talks be­tween U.S. and Iran­ian of­fi­cials in Oman at the end of De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s first term.

They re­quired dozens of di­rect high-lev­el in­ter­ven­tions from Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry and En­er­gy Sec­re­tary Ernest Mo­niz, not to men­tion a team of dozens of tech­ni­cal ex­perts trav­el­ing to Eu­rope and else­where be­fore the con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions in Vi­en­na.

Trump with­drew from the JCPOA in 2018 be­fore most of its more con­tentious con­ces­sions had come in­to ef­fect, and there is no in­di­ca­tion now that Iran is will­ing to of­fer much more.

The JCPOA re­lied on very tech­ni­cal lan­guage and un­der­stand­ings, in­clud­ing lim­its on ura­ni­um en­rich­ment, ad­vanced cen­trifuges and heavy wa­ter pro­duc­tion. In ex­change, Iran was grant­ed sig­nif­i­cant sanc­tions re­lief, amount­ing to bil­lions of dol­lars.

As un­hap­py as crit­ics were about the JCPOA — Trump called it the “worst deal ever ne­go­ti­at­ed,” while all Re­pub­li­cans and a num­ber of promi­nent De­moc­rats vot­ed against it — all sides ac­knowl­edge it took more than 18 months to get to an even im­per­fect agree­ment.

Re­pub­li­cans say Con­gress must ap­prove any deal

Re­pub­li­cans say any nu­clear deal with Iran should be brought to Con­gress, as re­quired by law. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he “would cer­tain­ly an­tic­i­pate that” the Sen­ate will get the fi­nal say.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said he had lit­tle con­fi­dence Iran would abide by any agree­ment.

But Sen. Roger Mar­shall, R-Kan., one of a hand­ful of sen­a­tors who has spo­ken to Vance about the agree­ment, said the short­ened time­line could be an ad­van­tage.

“Iran’s modus operan­di is to ne­go­ti­ate for the pur­pose of de­lay­ing, so they can rearm them­selves,” Mar­shall said. “I think the pres­i­dent has to give them some type of a fi­nite amount of time, or there’s go­ing to be con­se­quences. So I think it can be done.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., not­ed that what could help Trump’s ne­go­tia­tors to ham­mer out a nu­clear agree­ment in such a trun­cat­ed time­line is that there is “a base” to work from fol­low­ing the Oba­ma-era talks.

Still, the JCPOA “took years to put to­geth­er. You had al­lies and even ad­ver­saries — Chi­na and Rus­sia — around the ta­ble, you had the IAEA at the ta­ble, the Oba­ma chief ne­go­tia­tor had a No­bel Prize in physics, Ernie Mo­niz,” Kaine said. “I don’t know that ei­ther Jared Kush­n­er or Steve Witkoff have a No­bel Prize. So it’s go­ing to be hard.”

Trump en­voys Witkoff and Kush­n­er, nei­ther of whom had any pri­or ex­pe­ri­ence in nu­clear ne­go­ti­a­tions, made nu­mer­ous but ul­ti­mate­ly un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to reach an agree­ment un­der Omani me­di­a­tion dur­ing the first months of Trump’s sec­ond term.

Those ta­pered off af­ter the U.S.-Is­rael at­tacks on Iran­ian nu­clear sites in June 2025, af­ter which Pak­istan emerged as the main fa­cil­i­ta­tor.

There al­so is un­cer­tain­ty about oth­er is­sues be­sides nu­clear that have been of con­cern to Arab coun­tries, Is­rael, Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States.

Those is­sues, in­clud­ing Iran’s bal­lis­tic mis­sile pro­gram, its sup­port for mil­i­tant prox­ies in the re­gion or re­pres­sion of its own peo­ple, do not ap­pear in copies of an in­ter­im agree­ment that of­fi­cials say broad­ly match­es the doc­u­ment. The deal has not been pub­licly re­leased.

It in­cludes ma­jor con­ces­sions, such as Iran sell­ing its oil freely, be­yond the terms of the JCPOA. On­ly at the con­clu­sion of the over­all deal in 2015 were sanc­tions on Iran’s oil lift­ed.

“A deal is bet­ter than more fight­ing, but the war Amer­i­ca and Is­rael pros­e­cut­ed against Iran has fall­en short of achiev­ing its stat­ed ob­jec­tives,” said Bri­an Kat­ulis, a se­nior fel­low at the Mid­dle East In­sti­tute. “This agree­ment is most­ly about clean­ing up an un­nec­es­sary mess and putting the best face on it.” —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by MATTHEW LEE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Se­ung Min Kim and Nathan Ell­gren con­tributed to this re­port.