After three to four months of indirect clashes, Washington and Tehran have initialed a text that opens a sixty-day negotiation phase. The United States made the document public on June 17, specifying that a formal signing is scheduled for Friday, June 19, in Switzerland, with the expected presence of Vice President JD Vance. Behind the scenes, Donald Trump and JD Vance reportedly already signed electronically on Sunday, and then both parties proceeded with a new remote signing on Wednesday, according to the White House. The French press summarized the same timeline, indicating that the two countries are preparing to sign formally on Friday. On the Iranian side, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Qalibaf is cited as a signatory. The document indeed contains fourteen points and is not a definitive peace treaty, but a political framework designed to govern the de-escalation process.
The first commitment is an immediate and permanent cessation of both direct and indirect military operations, accompanied by the lifting of naval blockades in the Gulf. The most sensitive point for global markets concerns the Strait of Hormuz. Iran must authorize toll-free passage and restore traffic to full capacity within thirty days, following a de facto closure since late February that had destabilized energy prices. Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, confirms Tehran’s commitment to facilitating the return of maritime traffic to pre-war levels and to neither producing nor acquiring nuclear weapons. At the same time, the framework agreement explicitly leaves the fate of the nuclear program unresolved, as summarized by dispatches mentioning the lifting of the U.S. blockade and the reopening of Hormuz without settling the nuclear issue.
The economic component progresses on two distinct levels. In the short term, Washington agrees to consider waivers for Iranian oil exports and a progressive unfreezing of assets, with an initial tier regularly estimated at around twenty-five billion dollars by Iranian sources cited by Reuters. In the longer term, the United States and its partners are to present a financing plan for Iranian recovery that could reach up to three hundred billion dollars over several years. This amount appears in the American presentation of the text, but it remains conditional on the verifiable implementation of the commitments. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who was among the mediators, announced the memorandum himself, underscoring the role of regional intermediaries in this sequence.
It is the nuclear question that concentrates all the uncertainties. The memorandum reaffirms the Iranian commitment not to develop weapons and to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, but it defers the most difficult topics to a later date. The fate of highly enriched uranium stockpiles, the future authorized level of enrichment, inspection modalities, and compliance guarantees will have to be negotiated during the upcoming sixty-day period. The preliminary agreement thus postpones these points, as indicated by analyses describing a sixty-day window intended to resolve the future of the program, stockpiles, and the progressive lifting of sanctions.
Mutual distrust remains complete, and both parties retain the option to withdraw if the discussions fail. For Belgium and Europe, the immediate stake is energy-related. The prospect of reopening Hormuz has already driven down oil prices upon the announcement of the memorandum, and a return of traffic to normal within the month would ease pressure on supplies. Beyond that, everything will depend on the capacity of Washington and Tehran to transform this initialed document into a lasting compromise by mid-August, when the negotiation window closes.