The memorandum of understanding that the United States and Iran signed last week has been read in Washington as either a historic victory or a surrender.
After the first high-level talks in Switzerland over the weekend, it is clear that it is neither. The document has become a basis for dialogue and a wider regional follow-on process, which will include political oversight, technical working groups, a communication line for the Strait of Hormuz, and a deconfliction cell for Lebanon.
That is genuine progress, but it is only an early step toward a nuclear deal.
Making any further diplomatic headway will require first and foremost reaching a joint understanding on the current status of Iran’s nuclear program. Without that, the memorandum’s central promise—to freeze Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for economic relief while negotiating a final deal—is impossible to verify and easy for either side to contest.
On the nuclear file, the memorandum restates Iran’s pledge not to build a nuclear weapon, commits the parties to agree on a way to dilute and possibly dispose of the country’s highly enriched uranium stockpile, and defers discussion of Iran’s capabilities—including future enrichment and stockpiles—to a final deal.
Until that agreement is reached, Iran is to “maintain the current status quo” of its nuclear program. That is easier said than done because the status quo has not been self-evident ever since the June 2025 U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and the subsequent restriction of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors’ access to affected facilities.
The IAEA’s last verified estimate, from June 13, 2025—now more than a year old—put Iran’s stockpile at 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent, which, if enriched further, could be enough for several nuclear weapons, though a usable weapon would still require conversion, weaponization, and integration with a deliverable warhead.
It is unclear how much of this stockpile survived those and subsequent strikes and where it is currently located. Neither a status quo nor a future agreement can be maintained unless a new baseline for the stockpile’s size, composition, and whereabouts is established. That will require comprehensive IAEA access to all relevant sites.
On Monday, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance announced that the Iranians had “agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country,” calling it a “major milestone.” U.S. President Donald Trump went further, posting on Truth Social that Iran will agree to have “Major Weapons Inspections in order to ensure ‘Nuclear Honesty’” far into the future.
These statements deserve scrutiny. Iran never fully severed its relationship with the IAEA; inspectors have continued to visit declared, unaffected sites, including Bushehr and the Tehran Research Reactor. The resumption of more meaningful inspections would be significant only if inspectors can reach bombed sites in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, as well as any locations where enriched material or key equipment may have been moved after the strikes. Centrifuge manufacturing and assembly workshops will be of particular importance to visit. Given the condition of damaged sites and tunnel complexes, inspectors may also need to leverage specialized technologies—including remote sensors, robotics, or small drones—to assess areas that are unsafe or inaccessible.
Iran’s foreign ministry, in contrast, says Tehran has not agreed to anything new and rejects claims that inspectors will be permitted to access nuclear sites damaged by U.S. and Israeli strikes. But this apparent contradiction may be procedural rather than substantive. Following the 2025 strikes, Iran’s parliament passed a law suspending cooperation with the IAEA and requiring inspections to be approved by the Supreme National Security Council. Formally, Iran has not granted additional access or changed the legal process governing inspections. But if the memorandum is to be implemented, specific IAEA requests will have to receive a more positive response.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi broke his public silence on the negotiations on Wednesday, saying that inspections under the memorandum are expected to take place even as Washington and Tehran disagree publicly over what Iran has accepted.
Negotiators will have to resolve many detailed and contentious questions about IAEA access in the coming weeks. This includes whether this would be a one-off visit, a return to routine safeguards compliance, or the foundation for a stronger regime. They will also have to agree on the composition of the inspection teams, timing and frequency of visits, and what sites, records, samples, declarations, and material-accountancy data would be provided. The damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities makes this uncharted territory for verification, but inspectors must be able to visit these sites to create a baseline from which any new agreement can be sought.
If a lesson can be drawn from the 2013 interim agreement that preceded the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, it’s that even limited restraints mattered because they were paired with defined access and monitoring, not because the text simply declared a freeze.
All of this will depend on having nuclear expertise at the table. Now that high-level delegations have departed, the real negotiation begins with the technical teams. IAEA input will be essential in this process because negotiators can promise access but only the agency can determine what access, records, and monitoring are sufficient.
Beyond resolving the terms of the memorandum, a host of bigger issues could still derail negotiations.
First, enrichment. There is no agreed position on the future of Iran’s enrichment program, including the duration of any pause. Trump has signaled conditional acceptance of Iranian enrichment, noting that it is “hard” to deny when other regional states have it, in a possible reference to U.S. support for Saudi enrichment. At the same time, reported U.S. calls for a long moratorium clash with Iran’s proposals for a shorter pause.
Second, credibility. Since 2018, the central obstacle to a durable agreement has not been Iranian reliability but U.S. constancy. Washington withdrew from an agreement that inspectors had verified, reimposed heavy sanctions, and then went to war, showing Tehran that compliance buys little if U.S. commitments expire with an administration.
The easing of oil-related transactions and access to frozen assets will test the United States’ ability to deliver the benefits it has promised on paper. Their impact will depend on whether Iran can actually access and spend the oil proceeds through reliable channels and whether both sides can agree on the terms of frozen asset implementation. The early disagreement over how those assets may be used is also a warning for the nuclear file: If Washington and Tehran do not mean the same thing by economic relief, they may not mean the same thing by maintaining and inspecting the nuclear “status quo” either.
Third, domestic politics. In Iran, even as Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei seems to have distanced himself from dealmaking, the military establishment is increasingly aligning with the diplomatic track. In Washington, however, no such consensus exists, which will constrain the Trump administration’s ability to negotiate and stand by a future deal.
And fourth, everything else. The memorandum’s broader goal of de-escalation, specifically in Lebanon, will be undermined if Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah continue. Likewise, fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz will require resolving complex logistical issues, including demining, insurance, safe-passage coordination, and future tolling disputes. Friction in any of these areas could rupture the regional track before inspectors ever reach nuclear sites.
None of this means the memorandum is doomed to fail. Interim steps are supposed to be partial; this one has convened talks and built a process where there was none. The coming weeks should be read as a test of seriousness.
In an ideal world, the ongoing talks would produce access to bombed sites and a real accounting of Iran’s nuclear program; the contours of a longer-term solution that includes limits on Iran’s future nuclear research and development, capabilities, and stockpiles, including more concrete terms on which nuclear sites remain, are dismantled, or are repurposed; economic relief Iran can actually use to transform its postwar economy; a Lebanon cease-fire that holds; and reciprocal steps taken without a return to threats.
There is an old Persian proverb: az in sotun be an sotun faraj ast—from this pillar to that pillar, there is deliverance. In the story often told with it, a man sentenced to death asks to be moved from one execution post to another. The request is so small that the guard obliges. But the delay is enough for someone with authority to pass by, hear his case, and spare him.
That is what this memorandum has bought: not salvation but time. It has moved the parties from one pillar to the next. Whether there is deliverance depends on what they do with the time before the clock runs out.