United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz praised the waiting-to-be-finalized Iran deal on Sunday, though he refrained from saying when the agreement would be signed.
In an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” Waltz said Iranian officials have agreed to key demands from the U.S. — such as a commitment to the elimination of its highly enriched uranium — but refused to confirm if the deal would be signed Sunday as President Donald Trump said it would be when he announced an agreement Saturday. He also hedged a bit as to whether all of Iran’s leadership had approved the planned deal.
“The Iranians are incredibly difficult negotiators, coupled with the fact that they’re having a very hard time getting guidance from their supreme leader, and they’re not always on the same page within their team, between the civilians and military,” Waltz told host Martha Raddatz.
“I don’t want to get ahead of the president or the vice president, but they have every intent of getting this done today,” he added.
Waltz called the agreement a “strong deal” even as he issued a caveat that much remains to be worked out in the future: “This is a memorandum of understanding. A lot of these details are going to be worked out as we go forward into the next round of negotiation.”
President Donald Trump announced a deal Saturday in a post to Truth Social. Iran has not confirmed a deal has been reached, but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday that a deal “has never been closer.”
If signed, however, it could end months of conflict between the U.S. and Iran. It could also mean the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — a critical waterway that Iran has effectively shut down. Some 20 percent of the world’s oil normally travels through the strait, but under Iranian control, few tankers have made it through, causing oil prices to skyrocket over the last several months.
Though Trump offered few details on the deal, Waltz on Sunday said Iranian officials have agreed to “walk away” uranium enrichment and end their support for “terrorist proxies” from “the Houthis to Hezbollah to Hamas, to the militias in Iraq that have killed American soldiers, my friends and colleagues, and the veterans for many decades.”
Still, early criticism is rising.
In an interview scheduled to air Wednesday, former President Barack Obama told ABC’s Robin Roberts that it’s “doubtful” that any agreement Trump makes will be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that his administration had negotiated with Iran in 2015. Trump withdrew the United States from that agreement in 2018.
“I’m hopeful that bombing stops and ordinary people are no longer suffering as a consequence of the war,” Obama said. “In retrospect, it’s a reminder that on a lot of difficult foreign policy problems, the notion that we can just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions may sometimes seem appealing, but the fact of the matter is that taking the time to explore diplomacy and exhaust the possibilities of coming up with deals that don’t solve 100 percent of the problem, but solve 80, 90 percent of the problem.”
Waltz pushed back on Obama’s remarks, arguing that Iranian officials could “delay” under the Obama deal. Under the new agreement, Waltz said, there would be no ”massive loopholes.”