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Notes -
The full text of the memorandum has been released and confirmed by the White House:
If this is signed as written on Friday, I predict major ructions in the GOP, particularly the Senate, which were already coming to a head before this.
If this deal goes through, it's going to be an absolute disaster. $300 billion USD, all assets unfrozen, and full access to the Strait along with Oman. Are you kidding me? That's far worse than anything Obama or Biden ever did regarding Iran. All that money going straight into the pockets of terrorists. More money, apparently, than the post-World War II Marshall Plan was in 2026 money ($180 billion). I would have said that they're in a better position than they started in, if many of their leaders weren't killed. But I hope this deal falls through, seriously. It successfully coming through would be a bigger loss than Afghanistan was for Biden. The Israelis need to violate the agreement for our own good.
The deal is crafted so they actually don't get any of that until the final agreement; it is also crafted to appear as though they get that beforehand; #11 is particularly deceptive in this manner. What they get immediately is an end to the blockade and permission to sell oil during negotiations.
This is the crux of the text as is. Most concessions in both sides are in three buckets: what the belligerents offer right now regardless of any deal, what the belligerents offer later conditional on a complete deal, and what the belligerents can't offer personally but promise to pursue via other actors later.
For example, number 11 states "The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use, the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MoU. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations."
This states that the US undertakes to make fully available, not immediately makes fully available, with the second sentence stating that the procedure for making available must be mutually agreeable based on later negotiations. Later negotiations, in turn, depending on the prospect of the final deal, until which the US side can claim no mutually agreed procedure has been achieved. While this does not necessarily need to be entirely tied to the 'final deal', the it can be as the US, not Iran, desires, with Iran likely going to push for more early and the US pushing for progress/concessions to get there.
Further, most frozen Iranian funds are not frozen under US jurisdiction. The US agreeing to issue all necessary licenses- which is again contingent on the mutual agreed procedure- does not give the US licensing authority over other actors. This turns into an angle where the holding countries have a veto authority over the return of frozen funds. After all, the US undertakes to make fully available, but anyone who reads this as an obligation to 'strongarm' the countries in question is significantly misreading who is liable to try strongarming countries one on one.
Most frozen Iranian funds outside US jurisdiction are frozen by people who were bullied into it by US secondary sanctions. Both the US and Iran know that they will be unfrozen quickly if the US wants them to be, and are negotiating on that basis.
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