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United States Vice President JD Vance revealed on June 15 that the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran was signed “digitally” a day earlier.
“We already signed the deal digitally yesterday,” Vance says during an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Vance and President Donald Trump digitally signed the deal, a senior U.S. official said during a subsequent phone briefing, adding that Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf signed on behalf of Tehran.
An in-person signing ceremony is apparently set for June 19 in Switzerland, according to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who was the first to announce the deal in the early morning.
While the details of the MoU are yet to be officially revealed, several reports suggest that the deal heavily favors the Islamic Republic.
The deal is also said to include a commitment from the Islamic Republic not to obtain a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless actual concessions on its nuclear program have been pushed off to subsequent negotiations that will go on for 60 days after the in-person signing.
One key point for the U.S. was the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for 20 percent of global oil and liquified natural gas shipments.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reports at the top of a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macros while in Versailles for the G7 summit that the strategic waterway has already “partially” reopened after a deal was digitally signed with Iran a day earlier. He added the strait will be “completely open” after the in-person signing ceremony.
He repeated that the U.S. has “gotten along very well” with Iran’s “new set of leaders,” again claiming that he has enacted regime change, even though the regime is still intact.
Trump also said “a lot of good things” are going to happen in the Strait of Hormuz and that fuel prices have already started to fall.
He stressed that the most important dividend from the deal is that the Islamic Republic will not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon.
The fact that the MoU has been signed digitally indicates that the deal is already done. The U.S. and Iran will likely commit to de-escalation until the in-person signing. However, Israel, which is not pleased by the agreement, could attempt to escalate.
It is unclear to what extent the U.S. coordinated with Israel on the MoU, but the inclusion of Lebanon in the deal was seen as a large blow to the latter.
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