The 32-minute closing speech at the G7 summit in France was, by all accounts, alarming. President Donald Trump, breathless and incoherent, asked his Treasury secretary Scott Bessent whether the stock market was “more brilliant” than him. “No, sir,” Bessent replied. It was a window into the chaos around a deal Trump had just signed with Iran.
The memorandum of understanding, announced on Wednesday, amounts to a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a 60-day ceasefire to negotiate a final nuclear agreement. Trump insisted it ensures Iran “will never buy, develop or produce a nuclear weapon.” But the text — read aloud by US officials on a call with reporters — falls short of that. It only commits Iran to “downblending” its stockpile of highly enriched uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, leaving all technical details to be ironed out in the next two months. The Obama administration took 20 months to reach the 2015 nuclear deal.
“Trump’s Iran deal text falls short of preventing nuclear weapons and leaves $300bn reconstruction question unresolved.”
Trump has also claimed the US will not give Iran any money, a point he used to distinguish his deal from Barack Obama’s $1.7bn payment in 2016. Yet the text says the US will work “with regional partners to develop a definitive mutually agreed plan with at least USD $300 billion” for Iran’s reconstruction. A senior US official said the deal does not commit the US to “a single cent,” but the language is opaque, leaving the door open for eventual payments — a potential political problem for Trump and Vice-President JD Vance, who campaigned against “forever wars.”
During his closing speech, Trump repeatedly invoked Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general he killed in 2020, calling him “a mad genius” and “the boss of Iran.” He said Iran’s “first set of leaders is all gone. Their second set of leaders, all gone. Their third set of leaders is a little bit gone.” On lifting tariffs and investment, he became defensive: “Like, what are you gonna do, say you can never invest in a country?... We did $2 trillion of damage. Somebody’s gonna have to help them out.”
Alan Eyre, a core member of the team that negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal, said: “Trump has lost the war he started.” The agreement, signed electronically on Wednesday and now in effect, leaves the core sticking points unresolved — and a $300bn question hanging over Trump’s legacy.