Trump and Iran sign ceasefire deal, temporarily lifting oil sanctions and pushing nuclear talks to 60-day window

Terms of the ceasefire

The memorandum of understanding, signed by U.S. President Donald Trump and Iran’s president, commits Washington to immediately waive the oil sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Once a final nuclear agreement is reached within 60 days, the U.S. will facilitate a $300 billion reconstruction fund supported by regional nations. The deal also ends the naval blockade on Iran within 30 days and eventually lifts all unilateral U.S. sanctions, according to the text read by a senior official. In exchange, Iran agrees to dilute its enriched uranium and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which it had shut throughout the conflict.

What the war achieved

The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on February 28, aiming to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and ensure it could never build a nuclear weapon. Admiral Brad Cooper told Congress on May 14 that over 1,500 missiles and 6,000 drones were intercepted, and Iran’s ability to produce them was set back by years. The U.S. military also destroyed 161 Iranian naval ships and knocked out 82% of its air defense systems.

Despite these numbers, Iran still launched salvos at Kuwait and Bahrain on June 6 and at Israel on June 7, causing no significant damage. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz proved its most effective weapon, bottling up merchant ships that carry one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas.

Nuclear ambitions deferred

Trump’s central stated goal was to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. The memorandum states that Iran commits to not having a bomb, but it pushes detailed talks on enrichment limits, enriched uranium removal, and verification into a 60-day negotiation window that can be extended. Critics note this is far less detailed than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Trump abandoned in 2018. Former President Obama said he doubted the new deal would be “significantly different or a significant improvement” from his administration’s.

Reactions and political cost

Trump defended the deal at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, using an expletive to describe Obama and asserting his deal was better.

And you know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama, and they said, ‘He’s a stupid son of a bitch.’

But the accord has drawn sharp criticism from Trump’s own party. Senator Bill Cassidy called it the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” adding that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed and that threatening the strait had worked. Barbara Leaf, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state, said the U.S. had started the war with “disastrously unrealistic assessments” and then “tossed away so much of the leverage” by not ending it sooner.