(AFP) – The United States suspended sanctions on Iranian oil on Monday after Vice President JD Vance said Iran would allow UN nuclear inspectors to return to the country. “We laid a very good foundation for a successful final deal,” Vance told reporters following talks at Switzerland’s luxury Burgenstock resort aimed at ending the US-Israeli war with Iran. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said for his part that “a very brief discussion took place regarding the nuclear issue, but there was no discussion of details.”
In Washington, President Donald Trump said the Strait of Hormuz, the critical channel for much of the world’s oil, is now “totally open” to shipping. Iran closed the waterway early in the war, sending economic shock waves across the globe. “We’re negotiating — we’ll see how that all goes — but we have two things,” Trump said. “We have an open strait and we have a country that will never have a nuclear weapon.” Tehran and Washington signed a memorandum of understanding last week laying the groundwork for the Switzerland negotiations after nearly 40 days of fighting that were followed by a shaky ceasefire.
The negotiations aim to tackle some of the most intractable issues that have dogged US-Iranian relations for decades, including Tehran’s nuclear program. “The final deal is the house,” Vance said. “We haven’t built the house, but we’ve laid a successful foundation to get to a good place for the American people.” The US Treasury said it was temporarily lifting sanctions on Iran to allow it to produce, sell and deliver crude oil and related products through August 21. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cited Tehran’s commitment to “free and open transit” in the Strait of Hormuz and permission for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to enter Iran as reasons for pausing the sanctions.
Vance said Tehran had agreed to invite IAEA inspectors “back to their country,” calling it “a major milestone… and the first step in permanently denuclearizing” Iran. Tehran suspended some cooperation and blocked IAEA inspectors from accessing key nuclear sites bombed by the United States and Israel in 2025’s 12-day war, and inspectors have not been able to visit Iran since November. Vance said Iranian assets had not yet been unfrozen as part of the deal and that, if they were, they would be used to buy US goods such as soybeans and would not fund terrorism. He called it “a classic Trump deal, where if Iranian assets are ever unfrozen, they’re going to go to make American farmers richer and to feed the Iranian people.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, posted on social media: “Oil and petrochem exports are waived, blockade lifted, some frozen assets released, and major reconstruction & development plan launched for Iran.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due to start a trip to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain to discuss the deal and “efforts to secure full and free safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” his spokesman Tommy Pigott said. Mediators Pakistan and Qatar said the US and Iranian negotiators reached agreement on a “roadmap towards reaching a final deal within 60 days” with technical talks to continue for the rest of the week at the Swiss resort. “Encouraging progress has been made,” they said, including a contact channel set up to “avoid incidents and miscommunication” in the Strait of Hormuz.
Before the conflict began, there was free international passage through the strait, but Tehran appears keen to monetize the waterway as part of any deal. Tracking data on Monday showed vessels were still transiting the strait, despite Iran saying on Saturday it had closed it again over Israeli attacks in Lebanon. In the weeks and days before the US-Iran talks, the war in Lebanon between Israel and Iran’s close ally Hezbollah threatened to derail the ceasefire, though the country has been relatively calm since Saturday evening. A “de-confliction cell” between the parties and the Lebanese authorities has been agreed to prevent fighting from erupting again.
Israeli leaders have nonetheless expressed deep misgivings over the deal, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday insisted Israeli troops “have full freedom of action to thwart any direct or developing threat” in south Lebanon. The overall death toll from the fighting in Lebanon has now surpassed 4,100, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
– Robin Millard with AFP teams in Tehran, Washington, Beirut and Jerusalem.
© 2024 AFP
