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President Donald Trump sent back changes to the proposed deal with Iran after a meeting with advisers Friday, officials said, extending the back and forth negotiations into another week.
The exact changes Trump requested weren’t immediately clear, but officials said the president has insisted on tougher language surrounding Iran’s nuclear commitments and its pledge to reopen to Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has also voiced concern at what financial relief might be provided for Iran as part of the deal, wary of comparisons to the “pallets of cash” that were delivered under the Obama-era nuclear deal he derides as weak.
The latest volley of proposed changes comes a week after Trump declared the deal “largely finalized” and signaled the end of the war was imminent.
Since then, US officials have telegraphed progress on reaching an agreement that would end hostilities, reopen the strait and begin more detailed talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Yet even after Trump announced he would be making a “final determination” during Friday’s meeting, and spelled out some of the deal’s conditions on social media, the two-hour session ended without a conclusive decision.
While Trump claimed in his message that the US would seize Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and destroy it, Iran has consistently said it is not discussing details of its nuclear program under the current negotiations.
Trump also claimed there had been no discussion of exchanging money as part of the deal, a condition Iran says must be included in any agreement.
How those discrepancies are resolved remained unclear as the haggling over the deal’s language ground forward.
Axios and The New York Times reported earlier on Trump’s request for changes.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Sunday that no agreement will be approved with the United States until Tehran’s “rights” are secured, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
“The soldiers of the diplomatic battlefield have no trust in the words and promises of the enemy. What matters to us is tangible achievements that we must obtain, in exchange for which we will fulfil our commitments,” Tasnim cited Ghalibaf as saying.
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons on Sunday morning said the terms Trump outlined last week for a deal look acceptable on paper, but expressed skepticism it would be achievable in practice – particularly in regard to the Strait of Hormuz.
“While we can use our technological superiority to bomb big factories in Iran, we’re not going to be able to stop them from having the power to use their mines to close the Strait of Hormuz and their drones to attack us and our allies,” Coons, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re going to need a tough deal to actually address this new capability that Iran has demonstrated in this war.”
In response to Iran’s chokehold on the strait, a critical passage for the global energy trade, Trump has directed the US Navy to blockade the country’s ports and clear the strait of Iranian mines.
The blockade has continued amid the negotiations, with the US military on Friday disabling a Gambian-flagged vessel that was heading to Iran by firing a missile into its engine room, according to US Central Command.
CENTCOM said in a statement posted to social media on Saturday the M/V Lian Star was en route to an Iranian port in the Gulf of Oman when the US military issued “more than 20 warnings” that it was violating the US blockade of Iranian ports.
This marks the fifth commercial ship the US military has disabled since the blockade began, CENTCOMsaid. More than 100 vessels have also been redirected.
This story has been updated with additional details.
