A diplomatic agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on if implementation is shoddy or nonexistent. So it should come as no surprise that U.S. and Iranian officials were back at it again days after the sides signed a memorandum of understanding that virtually everybody in Washington hates in one way or another.
This past weekend, Vice President JD Vance flew to Switzerland for several days of follow-on negotiations with the Iranians. The sit-down kick-started a 60-day time frame during which the United States and Iran will seek to clinch a formal agreement on the latter’s nuclear program in exchange for broad U.S. sanctions relief for the Iranian economy.
Vance was reasonably pleased with the outcome. According to a joint statement released on Monday, the U.S. and Iran agreed to further technical talks, created several working groups and established a de-escalation cell to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz remains open and the separate ceasefire in Lebanon is adhered to.
It’s that last item that has the most potential to upend the negotiations. On its own, the war in Lebanon, which has killed more than 4,000 people since it restarted on March 2, has nothing to do with keeping the strait functional or ending the conflict between Washington and Tehran. Yet as a practical matter, the two are very much connected. The Iranians insisted that for the rest of the memorandum of understanding to proceed, President Donald Trump’s administration must press Israel to end its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has uprooted more than 1 million Lebanese from their homes and resulted in an Israeli occupation of a band of Lebanese territory roughly 6 miles into the country.
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