Note that clauses 1, 4, 5, 10, and 11 must be confirmed first. 10 and 11 are interesting.
The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this MOU and until the termination of sanctions, US Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products, and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.
The US will let Iran sell its oil, despite sanctions, while a final agreement is being negotiated. This is a lucrative concession that will bring immediate relief to the Iranian economy. It will also help the world economy by restoring the oil supply that has been choked off by the war.
11 The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MOU. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during negotiations. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designated by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all necessary licenses and authorizations accordingly.
Unfreezing these assets is not an insubstantial gesture. Iran had been insisting on the release of $24 billion, as Mohsen Rezaei, military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, told CNN before the agreement was finalized.
But the figure could end up being much larger. While the precise value of Iran’s frozen funds is not publicly available, Iranian media outlets and analysts estimate it ranges between $124 billion and $167 billion. A large portion of whatever funds are ultimately unfrozen would likely be spent outside of Iran on goods and imports.
Iran, unlike Trump, knows exactly what it signed: a guarantee that probably nine figures of frozen assets will be released. This roughly replicated the amount that Obama unfroze, that Trump always whines about. Plus they also get oil revenue without getting infrastructure bombed.
Clause 4 is also interesting. It says that Iran has to allow ship passage without tolls … for 60 days. After that, it can see what it can get away with.
For Iran, the $300 billion is win/win. They get everything they wanted first, and maybe some gravy after. And the number alone will get Trump vilified by the right and the left and the rest of the world. MAGAworld will be spinning so hard to justify this deal that it will make up for Trump’s war on windmills.
I knew this war was going to end badly from the day it started. I didn’t imagine that it could possibly end this badly. The idea that TFG is going to somehow convince the Gulf States to fork over $300 billion in war reparations (let’s not pretend that they’re anything else by calling them ‘investments’ in a country we attacked without provocation) to pay for a war that we didn’t deign to inform them that we were launching beforehand, and that they suffered substantial financial damage to their own infrastructure from Iran attacking them, in a manner similar to how we offset some of the costs of Desert Storm and Iraq 2003, is patently laughable. Suadi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar et al are going to be in no hurry to cough up a dime. Particularly since they had no part in these negotiations.
So, my interpretation: in order to secure a “deal”, Trump promised Iran $300 billion in compensation for the damage he caused by destroying half the country in an unprovoked war that was never necessary and accomplished absolutely nothing, and this money will be supplied by other countries who had nothing to do with any of it.
Sounds like fine Trumpian logic to me, or maybe a sign of rapidly increasing dementia.
According to Vance (and here is a large bag of salt to take with this)
Vance said that the United States is not paying the Islamic Republic and that any economic benefits for Iran depend on full compliance with the agreement.
His comments came as the White House faced Republican backlash over whether Trump gave Iran too much in a 14-point memorandum of understanding that includes sanctions relief, access to frozen funds and a proposed $300 billion reconstruction plan.
What I dont get, is that if “we” “won” this little war, why do we pay them? (Yes, I know, the USA didnt “win” this mini-war)
You know, $300 billion dollars is such an absurdly huge figure for war reparations that it occurred to me to see how it stacks up with the war reparations imposed upon Germany at the end of WWI. You’ll be happy to know that we’re only pledging to give Iran half of the value of the German war reparations, adjusted for inflation.
On the other hand, we’re pledging half the amount of war reparations for a three-month long war as Germany was forced to pay after over 4 years of total war. Truly, an “are your war reparations half empty or half full” moment.
It’s also not reperations, it’s a pledge by Trump that private companies (most of which he claims won’t even be American companies) will invest that much money in Iran.
The most valuable thing about this memorandum would appear to be the paper it is printed on.
When you’re paying another party $300 billion dollars to end a war, it’s war reparations. You are seriously drinking nothing but the Kool-Aid if you believe it’s ‘investments’. You don’t ‘invest’ $300 billion dollars to a country you’re at war with as a condition to end the war.
When you are saying that someone else will pay another party $300 billion to end a war, that’s not reparations, it’s an empty promise. One would have to be seriously drinking the kool-aid if they believe that any money will change hands because Trump said so.
The United States of America undertakes, with regional partners, to develop a definitive mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 Billion, for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of final Deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.
That’s not just a promise to try to persuade investors. This is a statement that the United States will do this. And Iran has to agree to any plan the United States proposes.
Now I grant that the Trump administration almost certainly won’t actually pay the money. But as I noted above, this gives Iran an out. They can now declare that they had been willing to hold up their agreement but the United States refused to hold up its end of the deal. So the United States nullified the agreement and Iran isn’t bound by it.
It seems like the wiggle room are that it couldall be loans rather than payments and it could be “we paid some of our contractors to help this rebuilding project in iran”.
That said unless the cease fire breaks down for some different reason I think Trump is going to do this. This is all in the agreement for one reasonwhich is that Iran could go the alternate route of charging boats to transit Hormuz and they’ve clearly shown they have the resolve to wait out a standoff on the strait and the US doesn’t. They don’t have to rely on a pinky promise and can always go back to staring down global trade if they don’t think they’re getting enough of what they were promised.
‘This’ isn’t the United States agreeing to ‘give Iran 300 billion dollars’, it is the United States agreeing to “undertake, with regional partners, to develop a definitive mutually agreed plan”. Agreeing to ‘undertake, with partners, a plan’ sounds like an empty promise to me if I’ve ever heard one.
I have a different take on it, and I think most of you are looking at it from the presumption that Trump is acting as a world leader being motivated by the things that motivate world leaders. He’s not, he’s a mob boss with the world’s largest standing army and some nukes, running a protection racket on the world.
You know how protection rackets work…..first you send in the goons to bust up a bunch of stuff to show that you mean business and kill or neutralize anyone that won’t play ball until you find someone that will, then you take a big cut of the profits of the business in exchange for not busting things up again.
The 300 billion was the main event, and it’s not going to be a gift. It’s a way for Trump’s finance and tech bro vampire cronies to make billions rebuilding the stuff we broke while getting their blood sucking fangs on Iran’s natural resources.
This wasn’t a perk they threw in to seal the deal, it was the endgame, as evidenced by the fact that Trump sent Kushner and Witkoff as his negotiators. They were negotiating for what guys like that are always negotiating for, they want to run the same game on Iran that they ran on troubled companies —- give them a bunch of not very favorable loans in exchange for big cash infusions, then take back most of the money you loaned as consulting and management fees.
And Kushner and Witkoff and “the Board of Peace” have a long term goal of turning the Middle East into a playground for tech billionaires, with resorts on the coast and data centers in the deserts.
It’s an ambitious plan that’s doomed to fail, because these people don’t understand the deep ideological divides that permeate the region, and that large amounts of cash will only go so far in bridging those divides.
A search tells me that " At the current open market exchange rate of approximately 160,000 tomans per US dollar, 2,462,000 billion tomans is equal to $15.3875 billion USD"
So the lowest $24 billion number is almost two years of their entire budget. If the middle range of about $100 billion is true, That’s 6 to 7 years of the Iranian government fully funded.
I disagree. Saying “we are going to undertake a plan to do this” is just a government document way of saying “we’re going to do this”. There’s no wiggle room in the text that will allow the United States to claim that we technically followed the agreement if we don’t hand over the money. And as I noted above, the plan has to be signed off on by Iran, which means the United States can’t unilaterally offer some proposal like “the plan is we’re going to pay you a dollar a year for the next three hundred billion years.”
I think you’re giving Trump too much credit. Yes, he is a criminal. But he’s not a competent criminal.
And even an idiot like Trump must see that if you get in a fight with another guy, and you end the fight by promising to pay the other guy, you didn’t win the fight. Sure, Trump doesn’t intend to actually pay (and he’s not smart enough to understand the consequences of not paying) but he knows it was an admission of weakness that he had to make the promise.
Sorry, I agree with @Babale. In diplomatic language, this commits us to absolutely nothing, especially if the “regional partners” don’t play ball, and they’ve already slapped this down. The Iranians don’t have a problem with including this clause. If anything at all comes out of it, even a single toman, they’re ahead. Just by getting Trump to agree to the clause means they won the propaganda war by making him look like an idiot.
