The price of peace: what kind of deal with Iran would Trump accept?

The bombs have stopped, the strait is notionally open and the price of oil is down. Donald Trump called it “a great and brilliant day for the world”.

And we are told – by the US president at least – that a peace deal is all but done. So, is this the end of his Iran “excursion”? Or is it too good to be true?

A certain scepticism might arise from the fact that Iran has quickly disputed much of what Trump has claimed about where things stand.

That includes his claim that Iran has agreed to surrender its “nuclear dust”, or the highly enriched uranium still in its possession – most of which is believed to be buried under what’s left of the nuclear facilities at Isfahan.

Iran’s powerful parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led negotiations in Islamabad, said the Strait of Hormuz would not remain open so long as the US blockade continued.

Indeed, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, only guaranteed safe passage through the strait “for the remaining period of the ceasefire”. Trump claimed Iran had promised never to close it again.

Much of this is likely bluster from the Iranian regime. But as Brett McGurk, a former Middle East adviser to multiple US presidents, pointed out on CNN, competing claims about the strait will be set straight by the evidence – we can see whether ships are passing through or not. It may take some time to become clear.

Iran’s economy is collapsing, the regime needs sanctions relief, and Trump wants a win.

McGurk and other experts said it was clear the American blockade of vessels transiting Iranian ports put real pressure on the regime to make concessions – and quickly.

Elliot Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former foreign policy adviser to several Republican presidents, said during the week he thought the Iranians might withstand the economic damage for up to a month before backing down. It took barely four days.

“The US move to block the Strait of Hormuz will prove to have been strategically very effective,” said Will Todman, a senior fellow in the Middle East program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

“I think this transformed the balance of power in terms of leverage in the negotiations. [It] really encouraged the Iranians to come back to negotiations more seriously, and to make compromises they previously thought they could avoid making.”

Nonetheless, many questions remain. Negotiations for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear program signed by Barack Obama, which Trump tore up during his first term – took 20 months. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and their team are trying to stitch something together in days.

It is clear neither the US nor Iran wants to resume fighting, though they may occasionally make threats. Trump is under domestic political pressure to wrap it up, has the midterm elections in six months and a visit to Beijing in weeks. Iran’s economy was already perilous and its partners – such as China –   want stability to return.

“Both sides would prefer a deal to no deal,” says Farah Jan, an international relations lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Iran’s economy is collapsing, the regime needs sanctions relief, and Trump wants a win. The problem is that what Washington is demanding and what Tehran can accept don’t yet overlap.”

Trump wants zero uranium enrichment, plus the removal of Iran’s uranium stockpile. But as Jan points out, he “cares more about the packaging than the technical terms.

“So, he will likely accept some Iranian enrichment if it comes with intrusive inspections, a long timeline, and stockpile limits.

His red line is rhetorical, not technical,” she says. “Whether they get there in weeks or months is the open question.”

Multiple US media outlets reported on Saturday (US time) that the Trump administration was considering unfreezing $US20 billion ($27.8 billion) in Iranian assets as part of a deal – although Trump wrote on social media that “no money will exchange hands in any way, shape or form”.

Todman says the most likely outcome – which could come within days – is a framework that leaves technical details to be negotiated later. That is typical of many of Trump’s deals.

But “having that announcement will be enough to usher in a period of stabilisation where – hopefully – the flows of energy through the Strait of Hormuz will resume and the disruptions to the global economy will begin to ease, and there can be the space and the time for more discussions”.

There is a wildcard in all this: Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon, but US news site Axios reported the Israelis were blindsided by Trump’s social media post saying he had “PROHIBITED” Israel from dropping any more bombs on Lebanon.

“Enough is enough!” Trump wrote. It was a remarkable rebuke of Israel from a sitting US president – though not unprecedented from Trump, who has openly reined in Netanyahu before.

Technically, the US State Department’s summary of the ceasefire terms says Israel reserves its right “to take all necessary measures in self-defence, at any time, against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks”. That gives Netanyahu fairly broad latitude to resume strikes if he chooses – or if Hezbollah resumes firing rockets.

Still, the Israeli PM is bound to obey Trump – his closeness to the US president, and ability to leverage the alliance, is one of his few remaining political assets. Blowing up Trump’s peace process would be a career-limiting move.

Can we declare the war effectively over? “It’s still too soon to say that for sure,” says Todman. “There could end up being wrinkles in the negotiations. I do think we are closer … I think it’s in both sides interests now in a way that it hadn’t been previously.”

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