Iran-US war latest: Trump and Iranian leader sign peace deal as Tehran vows to charge Strait of Hormuz fees – The Independent
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The US president told the G7 that he would ‘go back to bombing’ if a full agreement was not struck within 60 days
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Donald Trump has formally signed the initial peace agreement with Tehran.
The president inked the early-stage deal during his tour of the Versailles palace in France on Wednesday evening.
Trump confirmed the historic moment as he left a subsequent dinner with French president Emmanuel Macron. “It’s signed, yeah,” Trump told reporters casually. “I signed it in Versailles.”
The details of the US memorandum of understanding with Iran, which included ending the war and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, were earlier released by US officials, as Trump delivered a long-winded speech in which he claimed to have saved the world from a major economic downturn.
However, Iran’s chief negotiator reiterated that Tehran would charge ships crossing the strait after a 60-day fee-free period stipulated in the initial deal with the US.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said “Hormuz will not return to pre-war conditions”, adding: “Iran has the right to sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and of course we will receive a fee for services.”
In interviews this week, JD Vance has sought to speak directly to the skeptics in his party, a preview of the difficult explanations he may be pressed to make as a candidate on the war.
On Megyn Kelly’s show, the vice president said the critics “believe Iranian propaganda” about the deal. But he acknowledged some of the frustrations on the hawkish right while trying to reassure the anti-interventionists that the Iran conflict isn’t the war in Iraq, where he served as a Marine.
“We were never going to get the quagmire that a lot of people were worrying about because Donald Trump is just not George W Bush,” he said.
Democrats have stressed that even as Vance becomes the face of the Iran deal, the fate of any administration official who harbors presidential aspirations — particularly hawkish Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has largely been quiet in the agreement’s final phases — will be tied to its outcome.“I think any member of this administration is going to rise or fall on the basis of the Iran war and the handling of the economy, and I don’t think there are exceptions,” said Senator Brian Schatz.
Backlash against the US-Iran peace deal, including from conservatives, began growing this week after the US digitally signed the memorandum of understanding with Iran on Sunday.
Luke Schroeder, a spokesperson for vice president JD Vance, said in a statement: “It’s unfortunate that some Republicans are attempting to undermine the President’s efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East and ensure Iran never has a nuclear weapon.”
Officials gave shifting answers about when they would release the text, but leaked copies of a draft were quickly met with anger and scepticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as Israel and pro-Israel advocates.
Their criticisms included concerns that the deal, meant to open a two-month negotiating period, seemed to offer Iran wins up front while guaranteeing little in return, and that Trump’s stated reason for launching the conflict, to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, remains unresolved.
In response to the backlash and mounting questions, the US on Wednesday provided the text of the agreement to journalists.
The agreement states that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under rubble, must at minimum be diluted under international supervision. It also states that Iran shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons – a commitment it has made previously.
But beyond stating that the US and Iran will negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program, other commitments still need to be worked out.
Criticism on the right persisted after the text was released.
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, a hawk who has defended the war, said: “This is an American surrender.”
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, criticised the agreement and said to reporters: “I think the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice.”
JD Vance was supposed to be spending the week promoting his new book, the kind of event a potential presidential candidate like the vice president typically uses to speak to a wide audience about his life and values ahead of a campaign.
Instead, the rollout of Vance’s second book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, has been largely crowded out by something else he’s put his name on: the tentative deal to end the Iran war.
The Republican vice president has embraced the role of chief defender of the agreement he and President Donald Trump signed with Tehran, giving a series of interviews touting the memorandum of understanding as a success and releasing a video championing it.
It’s a striking emergence for a politician who was known for his skepticism of foreign military interventions and who seemed reluctant to speak on the conflict when Trump launched it in late February.
The vice president is poised to yoke himself further to the conflict’s outcome on Friday, when he’s expected to travel to Switzerland to kick off a new phase of negotiations with Iran. He was originally expected to attend a formal signing ceremony for the deal, but Trump formally signed it on Wednesday instead.
Vance becoming a hype man for the agreement seems to be an all-in gamble that, should he decide to seek the White House in 2028, voters will reward him for being the face of ending an unpopular conflict.
It’s also setting Vance up as the presumptive fall-guy should the deal with Iran falter.
Trump joked about such a possibility on Wednesday.
“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” Trump said.
Donald Trump suggested he would blame vice president JD Vance if the Iran peace deal failed.
Asked about the possibility of blaming Vance if the deal fails, Trump replied: “I like that idea, sure.”
“This way, if it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” the president continued.
“You better be careful, JD,” he said.
Vance has become a leading administration voice promoting the initial agreement to end the war in Iran, even as Trump has occasionally contradicted facets of the agreement that Vance has announced publicly.
If you’d like to know how Donald Trump’s closing speech at the G7 went, it’s probably best to start at the part where he asked Scott Bessent whether the stock market was smarter than his Treasury secretary.
“No, sir,” Bessent dutifully replied. He was disagreeing with a notion Trump had just posited, but it was clear from his tone of voice that he didn’t mean to disagree.
He was simply trying to make real-time sense of what his boss had just said, which happened to be the semi-coherent and utterly baffling: “The stock market is more brilliant than anybody there is, including people on this stage, apart from me. What do you think, Scott, is the stock market more brilliant than you?”
Yes, sir? No, sir? What, sir? It was clear at that point, just a couple of minutes in, that nobody — including his own team, or perhaps especially his own team — had any idea what Trump was talking about.
More here.
Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif deleted a post on the US-Iran deal and later reposted it without a reference to the Friday signing ceremony.
Sharif had written on X that there would still be a formal signing ceremony on Friday, after both sides had already signed a memorandum of agreement.
Sharif briefly removed the post a short time later, however. Then, he reposted most of the same text but removed a reference to Friday’s ceremony.
That could cast doubt on whether the ceremony will happen.
Oil prices fell in early trading this morning after the US and Iran signed an interim agreement that would end the Iran war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and waive US sanctions on Tehran’s oil, resolving the largest energy supply disruption in history.
Brent crude futures were down 89 cents, or 1.12 per cent, at $78.66 a barrel, and US West Texas Intermediate fell 98 cents, or 1.28 per cent, to $75.81 a barrel.
US president Donald Trump has threatened that he could resume attacks and kill Iranian officials if they failed to honour their commitments after both nations signed the peace deal on Wednesday.
“We’re going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement,” Trump said of Iran at a press conference.
“I don’t want them to. I want them to honour the agreement.”
He also called Iranians “smart people” as US and Iranian negotiators work on a permanent truce over the coming 60 days, which Trump said he hoped would usher in peace in the Middle East and lower oil prices.
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