The deal US President Donald Trump struck with Iran will ultimately see the Strait of Hormuz open “permanently without fees.” He said this in an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, in which he also warned that if Tehran does not reach a final agreement with the United States on its nuclear program, it will resume attacks on Iran or make the US “the guardian of the Middle East” in exchange for 20 percent of revenues from the region.
- Trump promises a permanently open Strait of Hormuz with no shipping fees.
- He threatens to resume attacks on Iran if a final nuclear deal is not reached.
Trump claims that the US attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the subsequent blockade of the strait fundamentally changed the situation in the Middle East in favor of the US. He praised Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin for not intervening in the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. While Xi called Xi a gentleman, he criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for escalating attacks on Lebanon that nearly scuppered the final deal. He called him “a very complicated person” and said the US should be grateful because “if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be here for two hours.”
Netanyahu under pressure from the deal
He told other media that Netanyahu will have no choice but to accept the agreement because the White House is pulling all the strings in this situation. The US president described Iran’s current leadership as “pragmatic” and indicated that negotiations on the nuclear program were moving forward. According to Trump, they are negotiating a 20-year moratorium on uranium enrichment, while admitting that he could settle for 15 years, which represents a significant shift from his original demands.
Asked whether the enrichment limit would remain at 3.67 percent, a level usable in reactors but not in weapons, Trump said the new deal would ensure Iran could only enrich uranium for non-military purposes — “forever.” Trump says the new deal will provide for faster inspections than the 2015 one, although those mechanisms have not yet been confirmed and are expected to be the subject of upcoming negotiations.
Tighter conditions for Tehran
He reiterated that Tehran cannot expect sanctions relief or access to frozen assets until it fulfills its obligations. According to him, the US is in no hurry to remove stocks of enriched uranium from underground warehouses, a large part of which was destroyed during last year’s attacks.
“The bottom line is that the attacks that we took had a huge impact on getting this deal done, a huge impact,” Trump said. He emphasized that the United States will ultimately work with Iran to recover and destroy all 12 tons of enriched uranium it possesses. Under the original 2015 deal, 97 percent of the uranium was shipped to Russia.
