Knives come out for emerging Iran deal: 5 things to know

Iran hawks are already circling as details emerge about an agreement that President Trump said Thursday could be signed as soon as this weekend between Washington and Tehran. 

“Any version of this deal with Iran means the leverage is out the window,” said Miad Maleki, a former Treasury official now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a fiercely anti-Iran think tank in Washington, D.C., in a post on X. 

Other prominent allies of Trump who have cheered the war — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Fox News host Mark Levin and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen — have demanded more details while expressing alarm about the reported terms. 

Trump on Thursday morning pushed back on Iranian media reports laying out the 14-point memorandum of understanding. 

“I am very glad to hear from @POTUS that Iranian media reports about the so-called deal are fake because the deal as described by Iran would be awful,” Graham wrote in an X post. 

Here’s what we know about the deal so far. 

Nuclear commitments remain vague

A senior U.S. official on Friday said that under the deal, Iran’s highly enriched uranium will be destroyed and Tehran could make a long-term commitment to not procure a nuclear weapon.

Iran has long said it will not seek to build a nuclear weapon, and made that exact commitment in the Obama-era deal that Trump pulled out of during his first term. 

What’s more important is what actions Iran commits to carrying out under the deal. 

Trump has said Iran handing over its stockpile of weapons-grade uranium is a red line in talks, but Tehran has so far refused to do so.

A potential middle ground is diluting or “down-blending” the material inside Iran so that it is no longer viable for use in nuclear weapons. 

However, Trump on Thursday seemed to suggest he might be OK with letting it remain underground for the time being. 

“Nobody’s getting close to it because it’s buried under a mountain,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, when asked if he had secured a commitment on the nuclear material. 

Trump has........

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