Lots of Iran deal details to figure out, U.S. has the ‘cards’

Vice President JD Vance on Monday said after the U.S. and Iran struck a preliminary deal that there are “a lot” of details that remain to be ironed out, but he expressed confidence that America has “all the cards” in subsequent talks.

Vance told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi is expected to be involved in those upcoming discussions — as well as its parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a hard-liner whose participation could signal that the regime’s conservative faction is on board with the deal.

The agreement reached Sunday would extend the U.S.-Iran ceasefire for 60 days and set up a framework for future negotiations about Tehran’s nuclear program and other key issues. The preliminary deal has yet to be signed and its text has not been released.

Vance told CNBC on Monday morning that the deal’s two major prongs are reopening the Strait of Hormuz and clinching a long-term commitment that Iran will never develop a nuclear weapon. President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that the war was started in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuke.

Vance indicated that if Iran abides by the deal’s commitments, it will be rewarded with loosened economic sanctions or other barriers, allowing Tehran “to be reinvited into the world economy.”

“I think it’s a great day for the American people,” said Vance, who has been involved in negotiations with Iran throughout the war that began Feb. 28.

The vice president said that despite the deal’s 60-day timer, “our expectation is that the strait is going to be opened in a toll-free way for the long term.”

“That’s the sort of thing that we’re going to figure out in these technical negotiations,” he said.

“There are a lot of very important details to figure out that we’re actually going to sit at the table and discuss together and figure out a path forward on these details,” Vance said.

Those to-be-determined details aren’t limited to the strait. Vance said that while Iran has “committed to destroy and dispose of their stockpile of highly enriched material,” the process for doing so has not been established.

“And what we’ve said is, OK, let’s talk about how exactly we’re going to do that,” he said.

“They want access to an unsanctioned economy. We’ve talked about, ‘OK, we’re open to that,’ but that would require a long-term commitment to the inspection and verification regime” imposed under the deal, he went on.

“So, a lot of these details are going to be figured out during those 60-day talks,” he said.

“We feel quite confident that we’re in a strong position,” he added.