White House Says Proposed US-Iran Agreement Guarantees Long-Term Peace in West Asia

A proposed agreement between the United States and Iran could be signed within days and would achieve Washington's key strategic objectives, including dismantling Iran's nuclear programme and ensuring long-term regional stability, a senior White House official said on Friday. The official indicated that negotiations were advancing positively, although internal divisions within Iran continued to pose challenges.

Deal aims to reopen straits, dismantle nuclear programme

Speaking about the proposed agreement, the White House official said the deal would address several core US priorities, including restoring maritime access, eliminating Iran's nuclear capabilities and removing enriched nuclear material from the country.

"What the deal does is actually quite simple. It accomplishes the core objectives that the President of the United States set out for this mission, and gets us in a very, very good place at the end of it. And what it does is, first, it reopens the straits and lifts the blockade. Number two, it leads to the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program. Number three, it leads to the United States getting the enriched material. We provided the agreement that this material would be destroyed on site and then taken out of the country," White House official added.

The official said the agreement would establish a framework for durable peace across the region while ensuring strict oversight of Iranian commitments.

"It guarantees a long-term peace in the region, and that would mean, of course, that the Iranians are no longer funding violence in the region, but it would also mean that everyone is respecting the territorial sovereignty of Iran, and then finally it has an inspection regime that makes sure that this is a long-term commitment and that it's a long-term enforceable, so that's what really the United States gets out of the agreement," the official added.

White House warns against relying on Iranian domestic messaging

The official cautioned against interpreting narratives emerging from Iranian state-affiliated media at face value, arguing that domestic political considerations were influencing public messaging around the negotiations.

"Iranian hardliners...want to message it to their internal audiences in a way that maximises their upside and minimises our upside," the official said, adding that the US expected "domestic propaganda" from Tehran but urged caution in interpreting such narratives.

"They're trying to sell the deal to their internal population. We expected that would happen, but there're also going to be a lot of inaccuracies built into that propaganda."

Agreement could be signed within days, says official

According to the White House official, negotiations are moving closer to completion, with the likelihood of a final agreement increasing as discussions continue.

"We do expect to be signing this agreement over the next few days. I can't give you an exact date, and if I were to give you a confidence that we were going to be signing this agreement, I maybe would have said 75% this morning. It's probably more like 80, 85 per cent now, but it's not 100 per cent. Their system is very complicated," the senior official said.

The official also dismissed reports suggesting Iran would receive immediate financial benefits once a memorandum of understanding is signed.

"Most of the people that we've been speaking to, and most of the people who have authority within their system, want to sign this deal, but not everybody, and those internal fractures are sort of working themselves out as they continue to try to get to a point where they can say yes to the deal, and then the final thing is anything that the Iranians get as part of this agreement," he added.

"I've seen people say that they get USD 12 billion or USD 1 billion or USD 6 billion upon the signing of the MoU. That's all not true, that the Iranians don't get anything upon the signing of the MoU or upon the negotiation itself. What they get is that they get rewarded economically for complying with their obligations under the deal, so if they turn over the nuclear material as promised, they'll get something. If they dismantle their nuclear programs or their nuclear facilities, they'll get something else. If they, you know, really commit to regional peace and stability, they'll get additional things on top of that," an official added.

The White House maintained that economic incentives under the agreement would be tied strictly to Iran's compliance with its commitments, including nuclear dismantlement and efforts to support regional stability.

(With inputs from ANI)