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US-Iran Deal Takes Effect as Focus Turns to Strait of Hormuz - BLOOMBERG
BY Josh Wingrove, Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Arsalan Shahla
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump signed an interim deal to end the war with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, speeding up the timeline for the agreement to go into effect despite blowback from Republicans who said it amounted to a victory for Tehran.
The so-called memorandum of understanding is now in effect, a US official said. It was unclear if Iran had immediately begun taking steps to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump told reporters he signed the document at the palace of Versailles near Paris, where he had dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron. Versailles was where leaders of the great powers gathered in 1919 to sign the peace treaty that formally ended World War I.
The memorandum had been signed digitally on Sunday by Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with Trump as a witness, according to a US official. On Wednesday, Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran signed, the official added.
Under a draft seen by Bloomberg and a version read to reporters by a senior US official on Wednesday, the strait was to rapidly be reopened, after a months-long closing that sent global energy prices soaring. The text also envisions immediate sanctions waivers for Iranian oil. Talks on nuclear issues, and potential further financial gains for Iran, will follow.
With agreement in effect, attention will turn to the shipping companies that had largely stopped sending their vessels through the strait because of blockades by both the US and Iran. Trump had said earlier the deal would be signed on June 19 to allow for any mines in the strait to be cleared away.
Back in Washington, the deal has prompted unusually strident criticism from some of the president’s allies in Washington who had cheered his military campaign in Iran.
“History teaches us giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea,” said Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican.
Even Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, said the memorandum is not so much a deal as a framework of how to get a deal.
While he praised Trump for trying to get an agreement, Graham, a South Carolina Republican, allowed there were “parts of it I don’t like” while raising doubts that the president will ever be able to get a firm agreement with Iran over their nuclear program.
