Transcription
Hello, I'm Lewis Vaughan Jones. This is the Iran war today. Our daily briefing you bring you right up to date with all you need to know on day 111 of the US Israel war with Iran. Let's start with some today's [music] key developments.
The US and Iran sign the memo of understanding to end the conflict in the Middle East with further talks expected in the next 60 days. In Washington, questions are raised about a $300 billion reconstruction plan for Iran.
>> [music] >> US Vice President says what's most important is Tehran won't have the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
>> Their nuclear program has been completely destroyed. Their capacity for enrichment, the facilities at which they were using to develop enrichment and develop a potential nuclear weapon, those facilities are still destroyed.
>> J.D. Vance also says more than 12 million barrels of oil will have passed through the Strait of Hormuz since the deal [music] was agreed. And our security correspondent has been assessing the latest agreement between Washington and Tehran comparing it against the previous nuclear deal signed in 2015.
>> Just [music] 2 months in which to thrash out these very complicated details, that doesn't really compare too well to the [music] 20 months that that it took to negotiate the previous nuclear deal.
So, it's signed. The US and Iran agree a deal aimed at ending the war. The memorandum of understanding says the key waterway, the Strait of Hormuz, must be reopened and also that Iran will get access to funds for their rebuilding efforts. Some in the US say the deal smacks of appeasement, something US Vice President denies. We'll hear from him in a moment. Iran's president hailed the accord as historic. The 60-day period for making the agreement permanent can be extended by mutual consent. Meanwhile, the agreement to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened appears to have started happening with digital shipping trackers here saying international sailing is passing through the waterway.
Well, there are around 14 points in general in this agreement which include issues like Washington agreeing to lift sanctions and unfreezing Iranian assets. But, here are four key lines. First, an immediate and permanent end to military operations on all fronts. That includes Lebanon. Next, the US and Iran to respect each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and stop interfering in each other's internal affairs. Both sides have also committed to negotiating and achieving a final deal in 60 days' time. And as we've been reporting, US Navy will begin the removal of its naval blockade.
Well, the US Vice President has been speaking to reporters in Washington denying that Iran stands to gain from the agreement. Instead, J.D. Vance insisted the US had achieved what it set out to do. Take a listen.
>> Their nuclear program has been completely destroyed. Their capacity for enrichment, the facilities at which they were using to develop enrichment and develop a potential nuclear weapon, those facilities are still destroyed. Their conventional military is still destroyed. Their capacity to threaten their neighbors is still largely gone. And now we see whether they are willing to comply with the next step of the president's peace plan. As you all know, the part of the peace plan, the part of this MOU that I think have been most misrepresented by certain parts of the media is the idea that the Iranians get all these benefits. You will hear things about $300 or $24 or this or that number of money or amount of money. And the simple fact is that the only way the Iranians get any of those resources, not a single penny by the way from the United States of America under any circumstances, but the only way that they would ever get any benefit of the bargain is if they comply fully and change their behavior.
Let's cross live to Washington. We can speak to Tom Bateman now. Hi Tom. So now we know a few more details uh of what's in uh the deal. What's been reaction there?
>> Well, I think you know, we've had a few more Republicans coming out now being prepared to publicly criticize this. My sense is overwhelmingly Republicans in the Senate are either biting their tongues about this or for the moment prepared to give the president the benefit of the doubt though feeling pretty uneasy about it. Um it is overwhelmingly the case that Democrats see this as a surrender deal by the Americans. They believe that it shows the war was a waste of American lives and the lives of Iranian civilians and also of a huge amount of course of American money and weaponry. Uh so I think that's what that was already kind of baked in that the Democrats were going to you know, fiercely oppose this. They believe it's weaker than the deal that President Obama got in 2015. The problem comes for the president to the extent to which he loses Republican support and I think if that deepens as the fallout of this deal emerges, uh he's got more of a problem in Washington. And uh you know, we heard J.D. Vance there repeatedly come back to these questions that he claimed was media mis- misrepresentation about what the Iranians gained from this deal. The issue of the $300 billion reconstruction fund which he says will not be American money, but it will require uh the Americans changing the sanctions environment if other countries in the region which he suggested want to invest in Iran's reconstruction. So it would need American support. He says that that will be uh connected to Iran delivering on its part of the nuclear deal. But the other big point here is that the Iranians can now sell their oil ex- can now export oil, sell oil, and oil products on the global market because Washington has now lifted its sanctions on Iranian oil exports. That's part of the deal and that is specifically where opponents of this deal are saying that this is simply a cash reward for the Iranians just for releasing their grip on the Strait of Hormuz, which is of course a problem the president didn't have when he started the war.
Tom, thank you. We can hear now what's coming out of Tehran. Kasra Ghanbari is the Washington-based correspondent for BBC Persian, which is part of the BBC World Service. Good to see you. So, the leadership in Tehran have been trumpeting this, it seems, as a pretty successful deal from their point of view. Is that fair?
>> Well, that's what the government says, but the hardliners within the establishment have been very much opposing to this deal because they believe that the the the government has or the people who have accepted the MOU have passed the red lines of the Islamic Republic. But, one person who was very much absent in the reactions that we have heard from Tehran was the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. He has just issued a statement and I would like to read parts of the statement. He's showing reserved consent for the MOU which was signed by the presidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States. He says that they He clarifies in his statement that originally he disagreed with the MOU, but ultimately he approved it because the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in his capacity as head of the National Supreme Security Council, is taking full responsibility for the agreement and perhaps personally committed that the agreement will protect the rights of the Iranian nation as well as the Islamic resistance, referring to groups like Hezbollah or the Shia militias in Iraq and Yemen. He emphasizes in his statement that the government has pledged not to concede to any excessive demand from the American side. And he also has mentioned that the bilateral meetings, upcoming bilateral meetings between the Iranian government and the American side, doesn't mean that the Iranians are uh the approving the stance of the Americans.
Khashayar, thank you for that. We're going to take a moment now to focus on the economy. Oil prices fell 3% after the signing. Conflict had of course sent energy prices surging, including the price of gasoline in America, which remains 34% higher than on the day before the war started. With me is our international business correspondent, Theo Leggett. Hi, Theo. So, what can we expect now the impact of this signing to be?
>> Well, it eases a problem, and that problem is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. So, when the conflict broke out, the Strait was closed. That took about a fifth of the world's oil and a large chunk of its liquefied natural gas out of circulation, which pushed up prices elsewhere, and we've seen the repercussions of that all around the world. So, you were talking about gasoline prices for American drivers, that's part of it. Jet fuel prices have also soared, and crucially, we've also seen the cost of fertilizer go up because a lot of the world's urea, which is a nitrogen-rich substance, um comes from the Gulf. Now, reopening the Strait, or the prospect of reopening it, has been enough to bring the oil price down. It's currently sitting at around $75, $76 a barrel. To put that into context, before the conflict broke out, it was at about $70 a barrel. At its peak, there were a couple of peaks during the conflict, it went up as far as $118. And when the crude oil price goes up, so does the price of everything made from crude oil. So, that's everything from gasoline to plastics. So, once the Strait reopens, and that may take some time, there's concern that it may be heavily mined, um then the energy energy can start flowing through, but it will take time. Crude oil prices have come down, that's good. Oil moves into refineries, you get production resuming fairly quick. But with other substances, liquefied natural gas, which is very important, a lot of it is exported from Qatar, that takes weeks to get those plants up and running again. And of course, there's a lot of shipping stuck in the Gulf, which needs to get out before empty tankers can come and take on board new production. So it is going to take time.
Yeah, thank you for talking us through that. Right, and let's head to the region now and get our reaction to the deal. Israel's Prime Minister still hasn't commented directly on it, though some of his coalition members dismissed it even before the text details were released. Let's cross to Jerusalem. Sweet our correspondent Charlotte Gallacher, who's there. Hi Charlotte. So just talk us through what's been said there.
>> Well, as you said, Benjamin Netanyahu not commented directly on the deal in the last 24 hours. However, he was a public event today, opening of a new road, and he did say a couple of things. He said he would always take a firm stand on Israel's security, while also maintaining a strong relationship with his partner, the United States. But he did also add Lewis that Israel would not be withdrawing from southern Lebanon while its security depended on it. So, obviously that could bring him into conflict with Donald Trump, who wants that fighting in southern Lebanon to end because he doesn't want it risking the peace deal. We also heard from J.D. Vance today, the Vice President of the United States, and he had some pretty strong words about people in the Israeli government who'd been criticizing Donald Trump, criticizing that deal, essentially saying, "Do not attack your strongest ally, the person who supports you the most. Your country," he said, "was built on our money." And he also went on to say that a lot of the defensive weapons that Israel use are built in the US and are funded by US taxpayers. So, a bit of a public telling off for certain people in the Israeli government today. The Israeli public, they're still very concerned about this deal. They feel isolated, constrained by it and there's an also a fear that the deal doesn't mention Hezbollah. It doesn't mention proxy groups that Iran has funded for decades and what people are worried about here is if [music] the sanctions are lifted, if Iran gets its frozen assets back, could some of that money be funneled to Hezbollah? So, that's a big fear that people have here. But yes, I feel at the moment there's certain people in the Israeli government and the US that are on a bit of a collision course.
Charlotte, thank you. Let's head now to Lebanon speak to our correspondent there, Kareen Torbey. And Kareen, uh what happens there in Lebanon could be crucial to this process.
>> Absolutely and people here in South Lebanon where I am in Tyre are basically monitoring very closely what's happening between Iran and the US. The first clause of the memorandum between the two countries talks about an immediate and permanent um termination of military operations on all fronts including in Lebanon. So, people here are kind of watching to see whether this time any talk of ceasefire will hold and whether the ceasefire will be real. We have seen a significant reduction in the number of Israeli strikes on South Lebanon in the last two days, but they haven't completely vanished and people are still very skeptical of whether Israel will commit to this ceasefire. And that's why here in South Lebanon, we have seen some people returning to their areas. Of course, the areas that are not occupied by Israel, people who had to flee these areas uh you know, to to to protect themselves or to flee the war. They have returned in very small numbers because the majority of people are very concerned whether Israel will commit to the ceasefire and stop the military operations in Lebanon.
Thank you, Karin. Let's take a moment now to consider the bigger picture. Is it possible that a final and lasting agreement for peace between Washington and Tehran could be reached within 60 days? Our security correspondent, Frank Gardner, takes a look.
>> This memorandum of understanding has been described by Amnesty International as a glimmer of relief for millions in the region. But, of course, it's never going to be quite as simple as just a simple memorandum. There is a huge amount lying ahead of hard work to be done, a lot of challenges, a lot of pitfalls. Let's start with the nuclear file because that really is the most important thing here. The whole aim of this war of choice that was launched uh at the end of February by United States and Israel was to try and eliminate forever the possibility of Iran having a nuclear weapon. Of course, there were side hopes as well that the regime would collapse, that it would be an end to their ballistic missile program. Neither of those things have happened. But, let's talk about the nuclear file here. So, in a way, we are back to where we were on February the 27th when talks were ongoing in Geneva mediated by Oman, by the Omani Foreign Minister, Badr Al-Busaidi. And we come back to that, which is how is the world, through the UN nuclear inspectors, going to monitor Iran's nuclear ambitions? And the time frame for this is pretty narrow, 60 days. Now, that can be extended, but just 2 months in which to thrash out these very complicated details, that doesn't really compare too well to the 20 months that that it took to negotiate the previous nuclear deal back in 2015, the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Donald Trump abandoned in his first term of of office. So, there are issues over how you do the monitoring, how you stop Iran ever trying to have a secret nuclear weapons program, what do you do about the 441 kilos of highly enriched uranium that's supposed to be down blended? Is the US going to do that? Is the UN going to do that? Who's going to monitor it? Um, uh Iran feels itself in a much stronger place strategically, although it's suffered hugely in this war. It knows that it can use the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic weapon to threaten to choke off shipping there. And when the 60 days is up, they are going to be the Iranians want to have a new framework in place that gives them some degree of sovereignty and control over that Strait of Hormuz, which the Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain are very unhappy about. Um, and then of course there is Lebanon. This, uh as far as Iran is concerned, this memorandum is supposed to cover Lebanon, but there is a risk there that the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah could easily flare up, as it's already showing signs of doing, and that could potentially cause Iran to retaliate against Israel, which would tear up the whole thing. So, it's a fragile deal. It's to be welcomed by everybody in the region, mostly, um but simply because it's an end of hostilities and it allows trade to flow again once more. Are we out of the woods yet? No.
Thanks to uh for that. And whether you've been joining us on YouTube, TikTok, Sounds, radio or TV, thanks for your time. We'll be back at the same time tomorrow with Iran more today.