“If I make a deal with Iran, it will be good and adequate, not like the one Obama made, which gave Iran huge amounts of cash and a clear and open path to creating a nuclear weapon,” the president wrote on his Truth Social account.
Trump has reiterated that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. “Our deal is exactly the opposite, but no one has seen it or knows what it is. It’s not even fully negotiated yet. So don’t listen to the losers, who criticize something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don’t make bad deals!” said the White House tenant.
The president said earlier: “I have instructed my representatives not to rush (…) because time is on our side,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Blockade on Iranian ports remains in place
He also said that the blockade of Iran “will remain in full force” until a definitive agreement is signed with Tehran, which both parties are negotiating.
The United States has imposed a blockade on Iranian ports since April 13, after Tehran partially paralyzed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in response to the American and Israeli attacks against Iran, which began on February 28.
Trump’s comments came hours after the rejection shown by both Republicans and Democrats to aspects of the agreement under discussion.
“Both sides need to take their time and get it right,” Trump wrote in the same post on Truth Social, while attacking the 2015 nuclear deal that former President Barack Obama struck with Iran and other Western powers.
Although the White House has not revealed details of the text, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei stated on state television on Saturday that both sides were close to signing “a memorandum of understanding, a kind of framework agreement made up of 14 clauses.”
Later that Saturday, Trump wrote in Truth Social that the deal was “largely negotiated,” though still “pending formalization.”
Rubio faces criticism
The White House believes that the agreement with Iran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz could be signed in the coming days, instead of this Sunday, as had been speculated, reported the American media Axios.
According to a senior official in Donald Trump’s Administration, the Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, would have given the green light to the general outline of the agreement, but there are still some details to be finalized and decision-making within the ayatollah regime is a slow process due to internal divisions.
While Trump admitted that the “relationship with Iran is becoming much more professional and productive,” he also stressed that Tehran must “understand that it cannot develop or acquire a nuclear weapon or bomb.”
According to leaks to the media, the draft agreement would contemplate the unblocking of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of sanctions on Iran, the unfreezing of Iranian funds and a 60-day extension of the ceasefire during which an agreement to limit Tehran’s nuclear program would be negotiated.
Several Republican senators allied with Trump criticized the concessions that the United States would be willing to make and questioned the justification for having launched the military offensive against the Islamic Republic at the end of February, if the regime ended up apparently strengthened.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on an official trip to India, came out this Sunday in defense of the draft and called it “absurd” to believe that the Trump Administration will accept an agreement that strengthens Iranian nuclear capabilities.
“The idea that the president, after everything he has demonstrated, is going to accept a deal that ultimately ends up putting Iran in a stronger position in terms of its nuclear ambitions is absurd. That is simply not going to happen,” he declared.
Both Axios and the Iranian agency Tasnim agree that the possible agreement prioritizes the end of hostilities on all fronts and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, partially blocked by Iran since the first days of the war.
According to Axios, the memorandum would include a 60-day truce during which Iran would normalize maritime transit in Hormuz, while Tasnim, linked to the Revolutionary Guard, reported that the agreement would contemplate the “gradual recovery of the volume of maritime traffic existing before the war,” although it specified that it would not imply a total return to the pre-conflict situation and that the passage would remain under Iranian control.
Both media also agree that Washington would temporarily suspend some sanctions imposed against Tehran and allow the sale of Iranian crude oil, as well as the release of a part of Iranian funds frozen abroad.
The nuclear issue
The differences between the leaks appear mainly around the Iranian nuclear program.
According to Axios, the draft memorandum would include an Iranian commitment not to pursue nuclear weapons, one of the main red lines established by Trump during the negotiations.
However, Tasnim assured that the possible agreement does not include any nuclear clause and that all issues related to the atomic program have been postponed to negotiations after the signing of the memorandum of understanding, within a period of 60 days.
This situation has generated concern in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had agreed with Trump that any peace agreement with Iran would involve the “dismantlement of Iranian uranium enrichment facilities and removal of its highly enriched nuclear material”a concern also shared by the European Union and London.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed diplomatic progress towards a peace agreement that guarantees freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz “without restrictions”, but demanded guarantees that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.
Given this, Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian insisted that Tehran is not seeking to manufacture atomic bombs, a repeated promise that the Iranian regime has failed to fulfill.
“We are willing to reassure the world that we are not seeking nuclear weapons,” Pezeshkian said, although he stressed that the Iranian negotiating team “will not make concessions” on the “honor and dignity” of the country, in an apparent reference to the right to enrich uranium for supposedly peaceful purposes, as established by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory, but which it has not complied with.
