President Donald Trump is closing in on a final agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran that would actually ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, a senior administration official told journalists including Breitbart News on a White House press call on Friday morning.
The deal, according to this senior administration official who spent nearly an hour laying out the contours of the emerging agreement and fielding questions about it, would have several major planks. This official said there is a “75 percent” chance the deal is signed in the coming days and that a signing ceremony to ink it would likely be announced imminently.
The most significant plank of the agreement would prevent Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon, one of Trump’s core objectives that he has been remarkably consistent about his entire time in public life including throughout this current conflict.
To do this, the first and most immediate pressing matter the arrangement addresses per this senior administration official is to remove and destroy the already enriched uranium inside Iran that was buried under mountains during Operation Midnight Hammer last summer.
“We want the highly enriched material destroyed and taken away from the country,” this senior administration official said. “The deal accomplishes that.”
Later in the call, this senior administration official further explained that the forthcoming memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran contemplates “that IAEA inspectors and the United States will be involved in the process of destroying and then removing the material.”
“The technical details we’re going to figure out,” the senior administration official said, adding that “because of the success of Midnight Hammer” that “some of this stuff is buried a skyscraper underground, and it’s also incredibly volatile” so “you don’t want to like send a guy down there with a backpack” to get it out. “Some of this stuff requires some very technical coordination, and so the MOU contemplates the destruction and removal of this material, and then we’re going to work on the technical details once we sign the MOU,” the senior administration official said.
Secondly, regarding the long-term nuclear ambitions of Iran, this senior administration official said the emerging deal completely eliminates that as a possibility.
“The second is that we want to ensure a long-term commitment from Iran that they will not procure or build a nuclear weapon,” the senior administration official said. “The deal does that.”
The third major plank of the emerging agreement, the senior administration official said, “is that we want to include an inspection regime that ensures Iran doesn’t rebuild their nuclear capacity many years down the road,” adding that “the deal does that.”
During the call with journalists, this senior administration official explained that unlike former President Barack Obama’s failed Iran deal — called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA — which Trump scrapped in his first term, this deal does not have sunsets and does not provide Iran with financial incentives until Iran meets key benchmarks.
“There will be multiple differences between this and the JCPOA,” the senior Trump administration official said during the call. “First of all, the JCPOA wouldn’t simply allow them to enrich — it allowed them to stockpile enriched material, and instead the sanctions regime was very weak. In some ways I see this agreement as the antidote to the JCPOA because the very stockpile that was allowed to be built up is the thing that we’re going to eliminate as part of our agreement. Now, the one caveat of course is that there’s not a lot of trust between the United States and the Iranian side and so what we’re saying is that if you guys actually perform, we’re committing to the sanctions relief but of course if you don’t perform we’re not going to do anything on the economic side… We’re not going to know whether they’re actually meeting their end of this bargain until we get further down the road here. I think it’s important for the American people to know that our approach here is to verify, verify, verify, and that the Iranians won’t get the benefit of the bargain unless they perform.”
Fourthly, and perhaps most significantly, the deal per this senior administration official also very clearly stops Iran from funding terrorism in the region. “Four, we wanted to ensure a broader peace, both an end to this particular conflict but also assurances that Iran would not be funding terrorist networks and so forth and the deal also accomplishes that,” the senior administration official said.
Later in the call, this official clearly stipulated what this means specifically about Lebanon and Hezbollah.
“What we contemplate is a full regional peace deal and that means Iran not funding terrorism, that means a ceasefire in the region that includes Lebanon, and so obviously if Hezbollah is shooting at Israel, Israel is going to have the right to respond, but we also I think have a plan in place where we’re tying the kind of economic relief that the Iranians get to them being good actors in the region and if they’re buying missiles for Hezbollah to shoot at Israel that’s not going to be good and that’s going to be reflected in the ultimate performance of the deal,” this senior administration official said.
The official also added that the emerging MOU text specifically includes a “ceasefire in Lebanon,” that means “of course, that the Israelis are expected not to shoot but that’s a two-way street.”
“It means Hezbollah has to not shoot at them and of course if Hezbollah does shoot at them then they get the right to respond and that’s been very clear,” this official said, adding that the Israelis have been informed of this by President Trump. “The President spoke to the Prime Minister yesterday, and the Prime Minister I think understands both that this is a deal that will mean great things for America and Israel and the Gulf Arab countries assuming the Iranians perform now. Of course, the Prime Minister as you can probably guess is more skeptical that the Iranians will perform, but I think he does believe that if they do perform then this will be a great deal for the entire region including by the way the people of Iran. So that’s where we are there, I think. The Israelis, they understand where things are, they understand both the obligations that the Iranians have and also what the Iranians will get if they perform some of those obligations, and I believe that they’re comfortable with that. They’re just maybe a little more skeptical that the Iranians will perform.”
Fifthly, of course, this administration official made clear that the Iranians will agree to fully open the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. will agree to lift the blockade.
“Our agreement is quite explicit that the Strait of Hormuz will be open, the blockade will be lifted, and there will be unrestricted passage of commercial vessels,” the senior administration official said, adding there will be some “technical issues” and “tactical issues” in so doing because of mines the Iranians laid in the Strait of Hormuz that “will have to be taken out.”
“Right now we’re getting a fair number of ships that the president has said out of the Strait of Hormuz now, but then there are some ship owners, there are some ship crews that are a little bit more risk averse,” this senior administration official said, adding it is “just going to take a little bit of time… before things truly return to normal” but that the Strait of Hormuz will open full with no tolls “effectively the minute this agreement is signed.”
Assuming the Iranians comply with the American terms, this senior administration official says that what they will get when key benchmarks are reached is sanctions relief and financial incentives.
“What Iran gets is that if they comply is they are going to be relieved of a lot of the economic pressures that they’ve been under for many years and so what the President wanted us to do is to accomplish our objectives — primarily that Iran not have a nuclear weapon—but say that if the Iranians are complying they can have the sanctions relief that they want,” the senior administration official said. “Basically, they’re going to be rewarded for acting like a normal country rather than the largest state sponsor of terrorism. And we think that they can achieve great prosperity. The president has said he wants them to be a successful country but successful really is a two-way street — economically successful on their end but not a major sponsor, not a sponsor, of terrorism and not a major driver of instability in the world… If they accomplish their end of the bargain, we’re willing to accomplish our end of the bargain.”
However, this official made clear that Iran will not get any money or relief until the key benchmarks are met.
“First of all, no money will be exchanged upon signing,” the senior administration official said… “Really our attitude is we’re building out a very specific structure of sanctions relief that is tied to actual performance — less to time — so for example the highly enriched or the enriched material is, something happens with that, they get a certain amount of resources. Something happens with the decommissioning of the nuclear facilities, they get something else. So it’s more tied to actual performance than it is timing. I mean, if they perform very quickly, we can see some sanctions relief happen very quickly but nothing upon signing. That was very important to us. We’re not paying to negotiate. We are willing to change our relationship with Iran if they perform some of the things that we’ve asked them to perform.”
And then ultimately, very long term, this could per this senior administration official “fundamentally change” the current makeup of the Middle East and bring Iran into the rest of the world in a serious way.
“This is a fundamental remaking of the Middle East,” this senior administration official said. “It changes — for 50 years, Iran has been this terrorist threat that has sort of sat over top of the entire region. What is being contemplated here is that Iran will fundamentally change its relationship with the Gulf countries, will become a much more peaceful and much more economically prosperous participant in that region of the world. Of course, we don’t know that’s going to happen but if it does then it will be a major, major win for the American people, and indeed for the entire world. So, there’s both the immediate win of opening the Strait of Hormuz. There is, I think, the short-term win of getting the nuclear dust. But there’s also potentially a long-term win where we remake the Middle East for a generation, and that of course is what the President is really fascinated by and really intrigued by. But it’s going to take a lot of continued work and a lot of continued pressure from the Americans and from our friends in the region.”
Asked by Breitbart News in the question-and-answer portion of this call whether that long-term vision possibly includes American energy companies and more of the West broadly as well as other Middle Eastern countries engaging more with Iran and its vast energy resources — much like the president’s success in Venezuela — the senior administration official said it all depends on how Iran does with the initial benchmarks.
“So what the deal contemplates again, assuming the Iranians perform their end of the bargain, is that the Gulf countries and some other regional countries — to be clear, not the United States — again, I’ve seen this reporting that the United States is going to give Iran money, that’s not true,” this senior administration official said. “What the deal does contemplate is that if Iran performs, the Gulf countries would invest in some Iranian infrastructure — particularly in the oil and gas infrastructure — to really ensure that it reaches its full potential and obviously if the Iranians perform you could absolutely see a scenario where Iranian oil and gas assets are being exploited and developed and where it’s generating a lot of prosperity for the people of Iran and the people of the world but only if the Iranians meet their end of the bargain. So what I’d say is that really this agreement contemplates Iran becoming a normal country economically, diplomatically, militarily — but only if they actually behave like one. I think that what you’re going to see, you guys will see this reported frankly both by some opponents of the deal in the United States but also from some hardliners within the Middle East, is this idea that Iran gets all these things and the simple fact is that Iran gets all these things if they perform under the deal and that’s the important component. I’m sure that they’re going to, for internal propaganda reasons, they’re going to emphasize the benefits and of course we would expect them to do that but I think what’s important for the American people to understand is the truth which is that the benefits contemplated by the agreement to Iran only come if benefits to the American people are delivered.”