What Iran and US get from deal and why both could struggle to keep it

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Amir Azimi Senior News Editor - Persian Service

Anadolu via Getty Images

Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday

More than 100 days after US and Israeli bombs began falling on Iran, both sides are claiming victory - a sign of how much each needed a way out.

A deal has officially ended the fighting, but the harder negotiations are just beginning.

Both sides have sold the deal to their public as a win but, as our analysts here explain, neither has fully convinced them and domestic critics on both sides argue that too many concessions were made.

Anadolu via Getty Images

A mural in Tehran depicting negotiators

For Iran , the deal with the US offers something just as important as a ceasefire: a way to claim that it has not just survived the war without surrendering but has emerged from it stronger.

From the start, Tehran's core objective was not necessarily to defeat the US and Israel in conventional military terms. It was to come out of the conflict with the Islamic Republic intact, its leadership still functioning and its negotiating position not completely broken.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) – as the deal is known - allows Iran to say it has achieved that.

The document, signed separately by US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, sets out a 60-day framework for negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme but it also confirms an immediate halt to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, mutual respect for sovereignty, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iranian shipping.

Iran's immediate obligations are significant, but relatively limited. Tehran has agreed to help ensure safe commercial passage through Hormuz, something that had long been the status quo before the war, reaffirm that it will not pursue nuclear weapons, and enter talks on the future of its highly enriched uranium and enrichment programme.

The US commitments appear broader. According to the MoU, Washington will begin removing its naval blockade, issue waivers for Iranian oil exports, make frozen or restricted Iranian assets available, work towards easing sanctions and pursue with regional partners a reconstruction and economic development plan for Iran worth at least $300bn (£224bn).

That helps explain why the reaction from Iranian critics has so far been muted. The MoU gives the leadership enough to present the deal as a victory: Iran's sovereignty is recognised, the blockade is due to be lifted, sanctions relief is on the table and reconstruction funding is explicitly mentioned.

But that silence is unlikely to last. Even the first response of Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was carefully balanced: he allowed the deal to proceed, while making clear that it had been accepted on Iran's Supreme National Security Council responsibility.

The most difficult issues have been deferred, not resolved. The future of Iran's highly enriched uranium, the scale of its enrichment industry and the rebuilding of damaged nuclear facilities will now be negotiated under intense pressure.

That creates a problem for Tehran's leadership. State media, the Revolutionary Guards, parliament and hardline figures have spent weeks telling their base that Iran defeated the US and Israel. Expectations are now high. Any compromise over enriched uranium or nuclear infrastructure could be portrayed by critics as a concession made after victory had already been declared.

But no compromise could be just as dangerous. If Tehran refuses to move on highly enriched uranium or the future shape of its nuclear programme, the process could collapse and the ceasefire itself may come under pressure. That would strengthen those in Washington and Israel who already argue that Iran has only used the MoU to buy time and could push both sides back towards war.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament and head of Iran's negotiating team, has tried to frame the talks in defiant terms. "I am not a diplomat," he said on state TV, "but I know well how to make America understand."

Khamenei's reaction has made that task even harder. He said he held "another view in principle" but had authorised the MoU after Pezeshkian, as head of the Supreme National Security Council, accepted responsibility for defending Iran's rights and those of Iran's allies.

That wording keeps him close enough to the deal to allow it to proceed, but distant enough to avoid full ownership if it fails. For Iran's negotiators, that may narrow the room for compromise. They must satisfy Washington without appearing to have crossed lines the leader himself has not fully embraced.

Ghalibaf's language is aimed as much at Iran's domestic audience as at Washington. The former Revolutionary Guards commander has to sell the deal to a hardline base deeply suspicious of compromise with the US.

The comparison with the 2015 nuclear agreement is unavoidable. In Washington, some may…