Secret US-Iran proposals reveal fragile path toward broader nuclear deal

By Katie Bo Lillis, Zachary Cohen, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — The US and Iran have been working on laying out secret proposals for implementing the 14 points that were signed this week, including details on how to address the future of Iran’s nuclear program, according to three US officials familiar with the negotiations, a regional official, and one former US official.

In response to a question from CNN on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance indicated that at least some of what administration officials have been calling “gentleman’s agreements” with Iran that go beyond the memorandum of understanding are written agreements.

But the sources emphasized that they are far from final. Iran has not signed any additional documents, as it did the 14-point memorandum of understanding, raising questions about whether the administration has overstated the commitments it has extracted from Iran and further emphasizing how quickly the fragile political effort to reach a final deal could fall apart.

“Some of them are written down, but fundamentally, whether they’re written down or spoken, this is why we structured the deal that we did, because we don’t trust words, we trust action, and we trust conduct, and so we’re going to reward conduct, and we’re not going to reward any words, whether they’re written on a sheet of paper or not,” Vance said.

US negotiators opted to move forward with releasing the signed MOU, without waiting for Iran’s senior leadership to sign off on the more detailed proposals on how to implement the 14 points, in part, because they did not want to delay the next phase of negotiations, according to one of the sources who is familiar with what Trump officials briefed to top congressional lawmakers.

It would have required additional time to secure Iran’s formal sign off on those still-secret proposals, so the US side decided to move forward with just releasing the signed MOU and working through the rest of the details during subsequent talks, the source said.

While the Trump officials told lawmakers they are not aware of any “side deals” related to the MOU, they did acknowledge that there are some relevant documents that have not been publicly released — including a “letter from the Iranian government” inviting the head of the IAEA to conduct inspections, begin work on uncovering where the enriched material is located and giving the international agency approval to invite American nuclear experts to join the process, the source added.

CNN asked the Iranian mission to the UN for comment on the letter.

CNN was unable to learn many details of the contents of the working proposals. The regional official described the written-down portions of the proposals as “working” documents that both sides have agreed to formalize as a next step. The sources said they include more specifics on what US negotiators are pursuing as the way forward for talks on Iran’s nuclear program, among other issues. A 60-day period of technical talks is slated to begin on Thursday.

“There are discussions on next steps but there are no finalized agreements beyond the MOU, and the U.S. negotiating team hopes to reach more agreements in the upcoming talks,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in a statement to CNN.

But the mere existence of these secret proposals highlights the incredibly narrow path of maneuver that US negotiators have to reach a deal that will allow both sides, at least publicly, to claim victory — underscoring the possibility that the two sides may never be able to reach an agreement that goes beyond the relatively vague terms of the MOU.

It may also offer critics of President Donald Trump’s Iran strategy further ammunition to suggest he is doing exactly what he railed against then-President Barack Obama for doing in 2015, when Obama struck the original nuclear deal that Trump tore up in 2018. At the time, Republicans railed against what they termed “secret side deals.” Congress even passed a law requiring any nuclear agreement with Iran, including any side deal or spoken understanding, be submitted to the Hill.

Included in the auxiliary proposals is some mutual understanding around the question of whether Iran will be allowed to continue to enrich uranium at any level, according to the sources — a key point of not only technical contention during the original negotiations but among the most controversial political issues in the domestic imbroglio surrounding the deal.

Trump officials have argued that the MOU and the associated “gentleman’s agreements” surrounding it are “performance-based,” designed only to reward Iran for good behavior; critics have said that it provides Iran immediate benefits in the form of sanctions relief without any enforceable agreement on concessions on its nuclear program or other US priorities.

The decision to keep the proposals secret is almost certainly aimed at avoiding domestic political embarrassment for either side in the service of allowing a deal to go forward, noted arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis. Much of the relevant technical information that any potential deal might contemplate was already made public under the original nuclear deal President Barack Obama struck with Iran in 2015, he said.

“There is no national security reason to keep secret the kind of information that was public under the JCPOA,” Lewis said. “The devil is in the details and somebody does not want us to see one of the devils.”

A senior US official on Wednesday said that “the motto that we want to have with this deal is no side deals, full transparency.”

Trump sensitive to Obama comparisons

Trump has been particularly sensitive to any suggestion that the tentative deal he has struck with Iran bears any comparison to the 2015 Obama deal.

“The Obuma Deal was a road to a Nuclear weapon for Iran, cash and all, one of the worst and dumbest (hence Dumocrats!) Deals ever made by the U.S.,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “Our Deal is a WALL against Iran ever having a Nuclear weapon, the complete opposite of Obuma.”

In 2018, when he withdrew the United States from that agreement, he said in a speech that it “lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity.”

But at least so far, Trump has not, in fact, reached a nuclear agreement with Iran. The proposals –- the “gentleman’s agreements” — have yet to be signed, according to the regional source and one of the US officials.

In 2015, Lewis said, negotiators found “extraordinary technical solutions to let both parties claim victory. It was remarkable that there was any trade space to be found.”

Without public access to the negotiating parameters laid out in the proposals, it’s not clear how Trump will be able to thread the same needle that will be substantively different than the agreement Obama struck in 2015.

It’s possible that negotiators are never able to reach a final agreement — much less in the 60–day period stipulated by the MOU. The primary function of the MOU may simply be the cessation of hostilities in Iran, rather than fulfilling any grander ambitions of setting the conditions for a nuclear deal.

Both sides have drawn such firm public red lines around dealing with the other that any meaningful compromise may now be out of reach — or, Lewis suggested, too politically damaging domestically to make public.

If negotiators want to reach a final deal, “Someone has to eat shit,” he said. “Which makes sense why you would want to classify.”

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