Middle East crisis live: Iran agrees to destroy enriched uranium stockpile, memorandum read out by US officials says

Much of the coverage of the deal has treated sanctions relief and the nuclear question as separate tracks. Officials on the call said the two paragraphs use identical language and are deliberately intertwined.

“The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran… in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal.”

“The sanctions relief in seven is tied to the nuclear settlement in eight,” a senior official said, referring to the paragraph numbers in the agreement. “To the extent that you perform on the nuclear questions, you will get the sanctions relief.”

So: Iran will not receive broad sanctions removal simply by signing the MOU.

The MOU says that at minimum, Iran conceded that enriched uranium stockpile “will be destroyed” through “downblending”(or diluting the uranium) on Iranian soil, under IAEA supervision.

“The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal.”

Officials were emphatic that downblending is a starting point, not the endpoint. “That’s the floor,” one said, “and we will push for more than that.”

Donald Trump earlier cast some doubt on whether the signing would happen as planned. Asked how confident he was that the ceremony would take place, Trump remarked on the unpredictability of deals.

“You never know with deals, do you? But you’re going to find out pretty soon,” he said.

To start, both the US and Iran, along with their allies, agree to declare an end to military operations on all fronts the moment the document is signed.

Senior officials on the call read out the line: “The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war by signing this MOU declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

The inclusion of Lebanon is significant, and it effectively requires Iran to rein in Hezbollah. Israel, officials added, retains the right to strike back if Hezbollah attacks regardless.

The officials spoke on Wednesday on condition of anonymity to read the the draft, which Iran has not released, ahead of formal signing ceremony set for Friday.

While Trump was delivering his press conference, senior US officials read the memorandum of understanding on Iran to journalists on a press call. The Guardian was on the line, and will be breaking down some of the key moments and lines from the text.

Trump ends the presser on a slightly random comment saying that if JD Vance goes to sign the deal with Iran, “if it works out, I’m going to take the credit; if it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

“You better be careful, JD, he’s going to turn his plane around and get the hell out of here. Yeah, I like that idea. I think it’s a good idea.”

Donald Trump said he would take action on Iran sanctions “as soon as they behave”, without giving more details about what that might look like.

Speaking at the G7 press conference, the US president said: “Something will happen as soon as they behave. When they behave, we’re going to let that go. We’re going to have to. I put sanctions on a lot of people, and then I let them go.”

• US president Donald Trump said the deal with Iran is “not final” and threatened to “go back to shooting” Tehran if it does not “behave”. Speaking to reporters before meeting with Egyptian president Abdel Fatah el-Sisi at the G7 summit, he said: “It’s not final. It’s a memorandum of understanding, and if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.”

• Trump said that the deal his administration has struck with Iran will act as a “wall” to the Middle Eastern country having a nuclear weapon. Speaking in Évian-les-Bains, France, he told reporters that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) is a “strong one” and that if Iran went back on the deal, “the process will start again”.

• US vice-president JD Vance said the text of the US-Iran deal would be released on Friday “at the latest”, as he was quizzed on the contents of the memorandum of understanding that has been widely reported in the media. Vance said Washington has been pushing for it to be released sooner but that Qatari and Pakistani negotiators, who helped mediate the agreement, “asked us not to release the full text for a little while”.

• Lebanese ⁠president Joseph Aoun said that the Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel in Washington were independent of the US-Iran deal to bring an end to the Middle East conflict. “The assurances we have received, and what we insist on, is that Lebanon’s path in the negotiations is independent, though we are certainly for a ceasefire and for any country that helps us, including Iran,” Aoun said, according to a statement from his office, after Iran and Pakistan said Lebanon was included in the US-Iran deal.

• China’s top diplomat told his Iranian counterpart today that it was “key” for all sides to “genuinely implement” their commitments after Tehran and Washington reached a memorandum of understanding to end their war, Beijing’s foreign ministry said. “The dawn of peace has already emerged, the key part of the next step is for all parties to genuinely implement their commitments and eliminate interference from various sides,” Wang Yi told Abbas Araghchi in a phone call.

• Italy’s embassy to Tehran will re-open on Friday after more than three months of closure because of the Middle East war, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday. “Our embassy in Tehran will re-open its doors on Friday,” foreign minister Antonio Tajani told Italy’s parliament.

• Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip have killed 1,005 Palestinians in the eight months since a ceasefire was reached between Israel and the militant group Hamas. That’s according to the Gaza health ministry’s latest toll released on Wednesday. Earlier this week, the death toll from the Israel-Hamas war surpassed 73,000 in Gaza, the ministry said.

• Nato secretary general Mark Rutte hailed the US-Iran deal to end the Middle East war, saying the planned reopening of the strait of Hormuz would be a “massive step forward”. “I know that many allies, through the initiative led by France and the United Kingdom, are ready to support,” Rutte told a press conference in Brussels.

• Iran’s military has threatened to respond to Israel after strikes in southern Lebanon killed four people, despite an agreement being reached between Tehran and Washington to end the Middle East war, including in Lebanon. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Israeli warplanes targeting the southern town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa and a drone strike in Ansariyeh on the coast this morning. There was no immediate comment from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the reports.

Curiously, Trump also thanks Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping for staying neutral on Iran, saying otherwise “they could have made it much more difficult for us.”

Follow the full press conference in our Europe live blog here:

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said that Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel should be limited to “mutual security”, and that the country’s main demand should be restoring its sovereignty after Israeli troops invaded the south.

“The ceiling for the negotiations with the Israeli enemy is mutual security… and any proposal under the banner of disarmament will not pass, as this is an Israeli recipe for taking everything and wrecking the country,” Qassem said in a televised address.

“Everything linked to organising our domestic situation, whether the issue of weapons or the economy, or the national security strategy or defence strategy… it all must be completely outside the negotiations. This we discuss internally. Therefore in any negotiation, the main demand must be Lebanon’s sovereignty,” he added.

Trump said he will work with the Gulf nations on “non-nuclear issues” but claims that maritime traffic through the strait of Hormuz “has already incrased very substantially” as a result of his political deal.

He then went back to praising himself.

What I’m doing and what I did should have been done years ago, would have been much easier, much less firepower, but it wasn’t.

US president Donald Trump is speaking at the G7 again this evening, saying his Iran deal “achieves everything we set out to accomplish and … much more.”

“If we didn’t do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years, you years, you would never have the Hormuz strait open, you would never have success,” he said.

He said he “didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened.”

Trump added:

And by the way, if they don’t honor the agreement or some things aren’t even mentioned in the agreement, it’s a memorandum of understanding. But we have an understanding of certain things without writing it.

And, if they don’t honor that, we’ll probably go back to bombing them until they honor it. You know, it’s amazing what bombs can do.

Largely similar versions of the Memorandum of Understanding agreed between the US and Iran have been published ahead of formal publication, which is due after a signing ceremony at a Qatari owned luxury hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Friday.

The memorandum has been described as “conceptual” by Donald Trump, and in essence deals with the start of a 60-day ceasefire, the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, the interconnection between talks on Iran’s nuclear program and the sanction relief that Iran will receive.

Tasnim, the news agency closest to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has claimed the leaked drafts is deficient with regard to the strait, a possible reference to a passage that Iran insists has been included saying the strait will be administered after 60 days by Iran. There is no reference to such an Iranian role in the leaked draft.

The draft opens by saying: “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, along with their allies in the current war, by signing this memorandum of understanding, declare an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon and pledge from now on not to launch any hostile action against each other and to refrain from threatening or using force against each other.”

The reference to Lebanon’s inclusion in the ceasefire and the binding in of all allies, a reference to Hezbollah and Israel, was crucial to Iran. But the US says the reference to a permanent end of the war does not require a Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory.

The next section states: “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States also commit to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.”

Both countries have accused each other of seeking regime change but Trump has now declared he is not a fan of enforced external regime change. The next section says 60 days has been set aside to reach a final agreement but this is extendable by mutual agreement.

An ⁠explosive Hezbollah drone ⁠detonated near ⁠Israeli ​soldiers in ⁠southern Lebanon, injuring four ⁠of them, ​the ‌Israeli ‌military said ‌in an X post on ‌Wednesday.

A second drone exploded ​several minutes later, ⁠injuring another soldier, ​the Israeli ​military ​added.

China’s top diplomat told his Iranian counterpart today that it was “key” for all sides to “genuinely implement” their commitments after Tehran and Washington reached a memorandum of understanding to end their war, Beijing’s foreign ministry said.

“The dawn of peace has already emerged, the key part of the next step is for all parties to genuinely implement their commitments and eliminate interference from various sides,” Wang Yi told Abbas Araghchi in a phone call.

“China has consistently supported Iran’s reasonable and legitimate claims and Iran’s efforts in safeguarding its own sovereignty and security,” Wang added.