“[I]t’s a memorandum of understanding. If it doesn’t get done in 60 days, it’s all right. We go back to bombing. You know, I don’t want to do that because it’s so good. But uh we might have to because we’re never going to let them have a nuclear weapon. But they’ve agreed not to and you’ll see that very clearly in the agreement.”
That was President Donald Trump at a press conference at the G7 meeting in Evian, France, describing the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran to end the war that began on Feb. 28, saying that Iran has agreed not to have a nuclear weapon but that if a final agreement is not reached including to retrieve Iran’s already enriched uranium buried under mountains within the 60-day extension of the current ceasefire, the war will resume.
President Trump explained, “On Sunday, we reached an agreement with Iran that achieves everything we set out to accomplish, everything and much more. Ending the current conflict, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. That’s what it was all about. That was… 99 percent Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. They can’t develop it, buy it. They can never have a nuclear weapon.”
Now, the U.S. naval blockade is over and the Strait of Hormuz is open again, with ships now transiting again as the freedom of the seas is restored. Oil prices have eased about 33 percent since April, with WTI crude now about $76.60 a barrel as of this writing, down from a peak of over $114 a barrel.
So, the ceasefire is holding with the agreement now signed by both sides. And now the details of removing the already enriched uranium can proceed in earnest: “But then the second phase of that was uh they were building or they were enriching material as they say. I call it nuclear dust. They were enriching material under granite mountains… Technical discussions on the removal of all stockpiles of enriched materials will begin immediately. We’re going to start that immediately.”
The President said the ceasefire extension and continued talks were necessary to get the global economy moving again: “Don’t forget, if we were going to drop bombs, let’s say we went another month, another two, three months, maybe weeks, could be another three months, could be whatever. What do you have left? You got maybe nothing. But you don’t have the Strait [which] will never be open because people that own billion-dollar ships — these ships cost a billion dollars, they’re not like sailing ships — or having their ships participate when you go up the coast and you go through the Strait and there are rockets flying over your head. They want to protect their billion-dollar investment. You wouldn’t have oil for maybe years.”
The alternative, Trump said, noting the consequences of the war continuing indefinitely, could have been a worldwide depression as global energy production shut down: “But are you going to let the 91 million people starve to death? I mean, one of the things I was very intent on, they have water desalinization plants, very good ones. I could have knocked them out in 5 minutes. Just like I knocked out Kharg Island, I knocked out everything but the oil… It was so complete. The only thing there is the pipes coming with the oil because I didn’t want to ruin the world market because they do a lot of money. But I didn’t want to do that. No. It would have been so easy. It would have been easier and I would have satisfied a group of 10 percent of the people. But it would have been the wrong thing to do. And it could have caused and it could have caused an international depression.”
Like the April ceasefire, which the current memorandum extends, it leaves thorny issues of Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its already enriched uranium in flux, but with addition of Iran stating it would not pursue a nuclear weapon.
The memorandum states, “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpile enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in Paragraph 7 with the minimum methodology to be downblending on site under the supervision of the IAEA. The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal. The final deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph.”
The tentative agreement states, “The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran acknowledge the critical importance of the nuclear issues above mentioned and express their intention to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.”
The agreement also references sanctions relief, which would also come in a final agreement: “The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned and express their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.”
So, in order to get the sanctions lifted, the nuclear issue must be settled. And if not, the President said, the war will begin again. It’s that simple.
The use of force by the President is of course more than credible. The war saw Iran’s navy and air force largely destroyed, its missile capacity severely degraded, in 2020 General Qasem Soleimani was killed and so forth. President Trump will use force when he believes it is necessary and in America’s national security interests.
He’s done it more than once and he’ll do it again. Nobody should doubt him.
It doesn’t matter if it’s popular. The Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793 wasn’t popular. What matters is does the final agreement get the nuclear dust out of Iran, get the inspectors in, get the Strait open permanently and ultimately end Iran’s reign of terror.
The whole time including now we’re learning who truly supported this President. In 2024, the American people trusted him to return to the Oval Office and if necessary, to prosecute the war and to end it one way or another — on his terms.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
