Mr. Vance: The US and Iran have created a good foundation for peace

“We have established a very good foundation for a successful final agreement,” US Vice President JD Vance told reporters on June 22 at the Burgenstock resort, Switzerland. “The final agreement is like a house. We haven’t finished building that house, but we have laid the foundation for a good outcome for the American people.”

Tehran and Washington last week signed a memorandum of understanding to create a framework for a 60-day negotiation process. Negotiators from both sides met last weekend in Burgenstock, with the goal of resolving some of the most difficult issues, such as Iran’s nuclear program, including its stockpile of enriched uranium and the country’s right to further enrich it.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said today that “a very brief discussion took place regarding the nuclear issue, but did not go into details” and that nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran have not yet begun.

Meanwhile, Vice President Vance said that Iran had agreed to invite inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “to return to their country”, and called this “an important milestone, the first step in permanently denuclearizing” Iran.

He also described an initiative to release Iran’s frozen assets, which would allow Washington to approve what Tehran can buy with the money.

The plan, initiated by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, would require the money to be spent on American agricultural products.

“We want to make sure we establish a process so that if we defreeze Iran’s assets, we can still be sure that that money will be used to help the Iranian people and not to finance terrorism,” the US Vice President said.

The plan, developed jointly with Qatar, would aim to use Iran’s frozen funds to purchase “American soybeans, corn and wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people,” he said.

Many hard-line voices in the US administration have criticized President Trump’s agreement because they believe it opens the way for financial rescue packages to flow into Iran, although Washington claims that Tehran’s “thawed” assets will not be used to finance military activities.

The mechanism Mr. Vance described is somewhat similar to a provision in a September 2023 agreement under President Joe Biden, under which Iranian funds were transferred out of blocked accounts in South Korea in exchange for the release of five American citizens detained in the country.

Iran is only allowed to use the above money for the purposes of purchasing items for humanitarian purposes, such as food, agricultural products and medicine. Biden administration officials emphasized that each transaction using this source of money will be supervised by the US Treasury Department.

Mr. Vance described the latest initiative as “a typical Trump-style deal, in which if Iranian assets are released, they will be used to enrich American farmers and to feed the Iranian people.”

Referring to President Trump’s previous threat that the Iranian delegation would have no country to return to if the two sides did not reach an agreement, Mr. Vance said it briefly interrupted the negotiations.

“There was a little bit of intimidation, there was a little bit of whining, but in the end, the negotiations continued and we made great progress,” he said.