The United States and Iran reached a deal Sunday to halt more than three months of war, but it did little to bring a permanent solution to a conflict that has rattled the global economy and tested the limits of American power.
The agreement, a memorandum of understanding, establishes a 60-day ceasefire across the Middle East, reopens the Strait of Hormuz, ends dueling Iranian and American blockades of the waterway, and releases billions in frozen Iranian funds.
A signing ceremony is expected on Friday, June 19. The U.S. and Iran are then to engage in technical discussions to reach a final agreement over Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. sanctions, Pakistani mediators say.
Why We Wrote This
The U.S. and Iran have agreed to open the critical waterway that has rattled the global economy and enter into 60-day ceasefire. The accord brings relief, but the thorniest issues at the root of the conflict remain to be resolved.
“Ships of the World, start your engines,” Mr. Trump wrote of the reopening of the Hormuz in a post on Truth Social. “Let the oil flow!”
Iran’s deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed to Iranian state TV early Monday morning local time that the agreement was reached. He said that a formal ceremony Friday would include the heads of the two delegations to determine the framework for the next stage of negotiations.
The deal was almost upended earlier in the day when Israel conducted missile strikes on what it claimed to be a command center run by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group, in Beirut. Iran vowed a military response.
The U.S. “either lacks the will to fulfill its commitments or the ability” to commit to a ceasefire, Iran’s top negotiator and parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said in a statement posted on X on Sunday, throwing the deal in doubt for much of the day.
Amid signals Iran would refuse to sign, President Trump issued a statement saying Israel’s “attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran,” and called all sides to “stand down.”
The disruption triggered a flurry of diplomatic activity by Qatar, Pakistan, and Egypt.
The final agreement, according to Pakistan, includes a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel has conducted an offensive that has displaced 1.4 million people, one-fifth of the country’s population. That invasion has been spurred by Hezbollah targeting northern Israel with rockets.
Mr. Gharibabadi, the deputy Iranian foreign minister, claimed that threats issued by Iran’s armed forces to retaliate against Israel “helped facilitate progress in the negotiations.”
A short-term truce was agreed to by Iran and the U.S. on April 8, yet retaliatory attacks by each side, duel blockades of the Strait, and Israel’s offensive on Lebanon had continued through Sunday.
For now the deal does little to resolve root grievances between Washington and Tehran.
The U.S., with the participation of Israel, launched Operation Epic Fury Feb. 28 with the stated goals of denying Iran a nuclear weapon, obliterating Iran’s ballistic missile program, destroying its navy, defeating its proxies like Hezbollah, and, according to President Trump, “regime change” in Tehran.
The deal calls for the two to discuss Iran’s nuclear program over the next two months. Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful.
Israeli government officials have so far been muted in their reaction. But leading up to the deal, a Pew poll showed that three-quarters of Israelis agreed with the U.S. decision to attack Iran. On social media, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called news of the deal “one of the most shocking failures of Israel’s foreign and security policy.”
Today, a hardline theocratic regime remains in Tehran with an iron grip, its ballistic missile program, drone manufacturing capabilities, and launchers largely intact. The U.S. retains a military presence and supremacy in the Middle East, which Tehran failed to dislodge by striking Gulf states hosting U.S. troops. As before the war, Iran’s economy is in ruins and hyperinflation is setting in across the country.
The Strait of Hormuz, the reopening of which is expected Friday, was open and functioning normally prior to the war.
The war has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives, spurred a global energy crisis, and upended regional alliances. The agreement reached by Washington and Tehran Sunday effectively restores a status quo strikingly similar to the one that existed before the war that President Trump said would ensure Iran would “never obtain a nuclear weapon.”