A senior official from the second Trump administration has publicly stated Washington is confident a historic deal to end the ongoing war with Iran will be finalized and signed in the coming days. If reached, the agreement is expected to reopen the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil shipments pass — in exchange for the United States lifting its current naval blockade on Iranian commercial shipping, according to early outlines of the emerging framework.
Core to the proposed agreement is a requirement that Iran destroy and remove all of its existing enriched uranium stockpiles, a non-negotiable demand the Trump administration has insisted on since the war began in late February. Technical details surrounding how this process will be carried out, including verification protocols and disposal locations, are still being negotiated, the official confirmed.
To understand the stakes of the emerging deal, it is necessary to contextualize the decades-long debate over Iran’s nuclear program. Uranium, a naturally occurring radioactive material, can be processed to fuel civilian nuclear power plants or refined to a high purity for use in nuclear weapons. The process of increasing the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope, the core fissionable component, is called enrichment. Low-enriched uranium, between 3% and 5% purity, is sufficient for civilian power generation, while weapons-grade uranium requires a minimum enrichment level of 90%.
Iran has long maintained that “zero enrichment” is a non-negotiable red line that violates what it views as its sovereign right to a civilian nuclear program, a position that has been a major sticking point in negotiations for decades.
This is not the first major nuclear agreement with Iran: the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated by the Obama administration alongside the UN Security Council and other world powers, already placed strict limits on Iran’s enrichment activities in exchange for widespread sanctions relief. When the JCPOA was reached, negotiators framed it as a landmark deal to eliminate the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
Catherine Ashton, the former UN lead negotiator for the JCPOA, told BBC Verify that the entire agreement centered on one core goal: eliminating international fears that Iran would pursue an atomic bomb. “When it was introduced, the Obama administration declared that the JCPOA would prevent Iran from building a secret nuclear programme and that Tehran had agreed to extraordinary and robust monitoring, verification, and inspection,” Ashton explained. Under the JCPOA’s terms, Iran agreed to cut its enriched uranium stockpile by 98%, capping its holdings at 300kg (660lbs), limit enrichment to 3.67% purity, and accept strict caps on the number of centrifuges — the specialized machines used to enrich uranium. In exchange, the United States and international community lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran’s oil sector, trade, and banking system, granting Tehran access to billions of dollars in previously frozen overseas assets.
For years after the agreement entered into force, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s independent nuclear watchdog, repeatedly confirmed Iran was fully complying with all JCPOA requirements. The US State Department also officially confirmed in an April 2018 report that Iran was “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA.”
Kelsey Davenport, nonproliferation expert at the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, called the original deal “remarkably successful,” noting that any deviation from the agreement’s terms or any move toward a nuclear weapon would have been detected immediately by IAEA inspectors.
That did not stop then-President Trump from withdrawing the US from the JCPOA in May 2018, when he labeled the agreement a “horrible, one-side deal that should never, ever have been made.” Trump argued the JCPOA failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile program, that inspection mechanisms were insufficient to prevent and punish cheating, and that the deal gave Iran access to billions in sanctions relief that it used to fund militant proxies across the Middle East. He has repeatedly criticized former President Obama for what he calls “bribing” Iran with billions in sanctions relief.
Jacob Olidort, chief research officer at the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute, argues Trump was justified in pulling out of the deal. “All of these issues were completely pushed to the sidelines, completely deprioritised and not included in the arrangement,” Olidort told BBC Verify. He also pointed to the JCPOA’s so-called sunset clauses, which saw many core limits on enrichment expire after 15 years, arguing the deal would have eventually allowed Iran to expand its program openly.
Ashton rejects these criticisms, noting the JCPOA was designed to solve the most urgent problem: eliminating the immediate risk of an Iranian nuclear weapon. “There was always a criticism that we should have covered all kind of things. But the critical question was, ‘Could we prevent any fear that Iran was going to build a nuclear weapon?’ And we did that,” she said. “There was plenty of opportunity afterwards to talk about other issues, ballistic missiles, drones etc. And indeed the Trump administration in its first term could have done that. If President Trump felt that the deal was inadequate, then the answer was to build on it, not to rip it up.”
Davenport also notes that while some core limits were set to expire in 2031, many critical provisions — including permanent IAEA monitoring and safeguards — would have remained in place, ensuring any move toward a nuclear weapon would be detected quickly. Sanctions relief, Ashton added, was a necessary quid pro quo: “If you sanction someone because they’re doing some behaviour and they change the behaviour, then by definition the sanction cannot stay.”
After the US withdrawal, Iran began gradually expanding its enrichment program, steadily increasing its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium. By June 2025, when the US and Israel launched preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the IAEA estimated Iran held 440.9kg (972lbs) of uranium enriched to 60% purity — just a short technical step away from 90% weapons-grade material.
The strikes, US officials have said, significantly set back Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon, destroying much of its enrichment infrastructure. Since the war began in February 2026, IAEA inspectors have been unable to access most of Iran’s key nuclear sites, including the underground tunnels at Isfahan where IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi estimated in April that roughly 200kg of 60% enriched uranium is stored. “We haven’t been able to inspect or to reject that the material is there and that the seals – the IAEA seals – remain there,” Grossi told the Associated Press, adding the watchdog also demands access to sites at Natanz and Fordo.
Trump has already claimed any new deal he negotiates will be “far better” than the 2015 JCPOA. While the full terms of the emerging agreement remain undisclosed, experts say the outline is already taking shape. Davenport notes that Iran will never agree to a deal without significant sanctions relief and access to its frozen overseas assets, a demand that puts Trump in a difficult position given his longstanding criticism of the JCPOA’s sanctions relief provisions.
Trump will likely seek to frame the deal as a historic breakthrough that secured concessions Obama never could, Davenport said, likely pointing to the permanent removal of Iran’s existing enriched uranium stockpiles and a multi-year suspension of enrichment activities. She also notes that direct comparisons to the JCPOA are largely unfair: after the 2025 US-Israeli strikes, Iran’s nuclear program is far smaller and less advanced than it was in 2015, a fact that changes the entire negotiation dynamic.
Olidort argues the US is negotiating from a position of unprecedented strength, noting Iran’s military capabilities have been badly damaged by the war and its regional proxy network has been significantly weakened. Any deal, he said, will be far stronger than the original JCPOA.
Still, former negotiator Ashton warns that military pressure alone cannot produce a lasting, sustainable agreement. “All I can say is in my experience, the way that negotiations work is that people have to feel that they’ve got enough to make it worthwhile participating in that negotiation,” she said. As both sides work to finalize technical details in the coming days, the world awaits what could be a pivotal shift in Middle Eastern security.
