President Donald Trump says he is meeting with top aides in the White House Situation Room “to make a final determination” on whether to accept a proposed agreement to end the war he started with Iran three months ago and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to global maritime traffic.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports would end and Iran would “complete the immediate removal and/or detonation of any mines” in the key waterway so that the strait would be “immediately open, no tolls, for unrestricted shipping traffic” to allow hundreds of ships that have been trapped on the wrong end of the strait to “start the process of ‘heading home!’”
“Say HELLO to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President,” he said.
“I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination.”
The president also claimed Iran’s supply of enriched uranium would be dug out of collapsed bunkers and removed from Iranian territory and “destroyed” with the assistance of the International Atomic Energy Agency and stressed that “no money will be exchanged” between Washington and Tehran “until further notice.”
“Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to,” Trump added.
The president’s announcement came less than a day after The Independent confirmed that he was weighing a 60-day deal agreed upon by U.S. and Iranian negotiators to extend the shaky ceasefire between the warring nations and reopen the Strait of Hormuz while setting up further negotiations towards agreements on Tehran’s nuclear program.
US officials had said both countries had agreed on a 60-day memorandum of understanding under which Iran would remove mines placed in the strait and agree not to harass any commercial shipping or demand tolls for passage through the key maritime chokepoint. In return, the U.S. would end the blockade it has kept on Iranian ports as shipping through the strait resumes.
The proposed pact also states that Iran would commit not to pursue nuclear weapons and enter into talks about the disposal of its supply of uranium that has already been enriched to near-weapons grade. Those talks would be the first order of business for any negotiations conducted during the 60-day window of the proposed deal.
It additionally declares that the war between Israel and Hezbollah that has devastated much of southern Lebanon would come to an end.
In return for the commitments to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and forswear nuclear weapons development, the U.S. would release frozen Iranian funds and open discussions about sanctions relief, as well as enter discussions on a mechanism to permit Iran to receive humanitarian aid and other needed goods.
In an interview with his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, for her eponymous Fox News show, the president praised Tehran’s negotiating team as “very good negotiators” and “crafty” but maintained that the U.S. “holds all the cards because we’ve defeated them militarily.”
“Their navy is totally gone, 100 percent. Their air force is totally gone, 100 percent. Their military, we sort of left it alone because we think that their military is somewhat moderate,” he said.
Earlier in the week, he told reporters at a cabinet meeting he believed Tehran was keen on an agreement of some sort and posited that the Islamic Republic’s hardline regime did not “have a choice” but to do so because “they’re getting clobbered” and the Iranian economy is “in freefall.”
The three-month-old conflict has taken a massive toll on Trump’s political standing ahead of the November midterm elections.
Trump’s approval rating has sunk to new lows amid the continuing conflict with Iran, which has driven gas prices through the roof across the country as the standoff with Tehran over the Strait of Hormuz has choked off global fuel supplies and left energy markets reeling and inflation spiking.
Last week, the polling aggregator RealClearPolitics reported that Trump’s disapproval rating average had spiked to 58.3 percent — higher than the 57.9 percent level it had hit in the days following the riot Trump had fomented at the U.S. Capitol in a last-ditch attempt to avoid leaving office after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
