Trump dev­ast­ated Iran, now he hits them with a ... LOVEBOMB

“Prez says Islamic regime ‘not rad­ical,’ his deal showers mul­lahs with cash — and no sanc­tions

By EMILY GOODIN, STEVEN NELSON and CAITLIN DOORNBOS

17 Jun 2026

Des­pite the same Islamic regime that has chanted “death to Amer­ica” still rul­ing Iran, Pres­id­ent Trump yes­ter­day said they are “rational” as he defen­ded a deal that will waive sanc­tions on Tehran and allow them to profit from oil sales in exchange for a gen­eral prom­ise not to pur­sue nuc­lear weapons.

WASHINGTON — Pres­id­ent Trump on Tues­day praised Iran’s lead­er­ship as “very rational” and “not rad­ic­al­ized” people as he sold a US-Iran agree­ment that could enrich the regime.

Trump’s shower­ing of com­pli­ments — even call­ing the Ira­ni­ans “nice to deal with” — comes as details of the pur­por­ted terms of the peace deal were pub­lished Tues­day after­noon by Israeli and Saudi news out­lets — with Con­gress and US allies still left in the dark.

Major Amer­ican news out­lets, includ­ing The Post, could not imme­di­ately con­firm the authen­ti­city of the doc­u­ments, and in a fur­ther wrinkle, Israel’s Chan­nel 12 pos­ted a 12-point ver­sion that dif­fers in word­ing, order and sub­stance from Al Arabiya’s 14-point edi­tion.

‘Nice to deal with’

The repor­ted terms of the deal would allow Iran to restart its oil busi­ness by waiv­ing sanc­tions, lift­ing the naval block­ade and free­ing up to $300 bil­lion to recon­struct Iran through invest­ments with Gulf coun­tries.

The White House did not cla­rify whether the leaked texts were accur­ate.

Trump pledged to release the text him­self after a planned

sign­ing cere­mony with the Ira­ni­ans on Fri­day in Switzer­land.

“I will not only release it. I will prob­ably have a press con­fer­ence and read it to you word by word so that the press cov­ers it accur­ately,” Trump said dur­ing a Tues­day meet­ing at the G7.

Trump, Vice Pres­id­ent JD Vance and Ira­nian par­lia­ment speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf elec­tron­ic­ally signed the memor­andum of under­stand­ing on Sunday, end­ing the nearly four-month war, but had not released the terms as of Tues­day.

Vance will lead the US del­eg­a­tion to Switzer­land while Trump left open the pos­sib­il­ity of also

join­ing the Ira­ni­ans.

“We’re deal­ing with people that I think are very rational people,” Trump said Tues­day. “They were nice to deal with. They were strong people, smart people. I think actu­ally they’re smarter than the first and second group, but they’re not rad­ic­al­ized and they’re, you know, look­ing to help their coun­try.”

Under the deal, Iran agrees not to pur­sue a nuc­lear bomb, but it leaves many major points — like what to do with the enriched uranium it has — up in the air for future talks.

In the mean­time, it allows Iran to sell oil with sanc­tion waivers, a source told The Post. The last time Iran oper­ated sanc­tion-free was in 1979, when the US intro­duced sanc­tions after the Iran Revolu­tion.

Amer­ican offi­cials involved in the deal say it provides for the 60-day toll-free reopen­ing of the Strait of Hor­muz and for gradual sanc­tions relief and unfreez­ing of funds if Tehran cooper­ates with the dis­posal of its highly enriched uranium and ends sup­port for ter­ror­ist prox­ies.

That 60-day time frame is included in the Chan­nel 12 ver­sion, but the Al Arabiya ver­sion says the sides agree to reopen pas­sage to full capa­city “within 30 days.”

$300B invest fund

Both ver­sions men­tion a pro­posed $300 bil­lion invest­ment fund, which US offi­cials say Gulf Arab states will fin­ance.

AFP via Getty Images

The exact word­ing of the agree­ment has stoked broad con­cern among Iran hawks who cheered on Trump’s mil­it­ary cam­paign to pre­vent the Islamic Repub­lic from ever devel­op­ing a nuc­lear weapon.

Skep­tics fear that Trump may never reach a point in fol­lowup talks where the highly enriched uranium is des­troyed.

Both repor­ted ver­sions say the US will tem­por­ar­ily lift sanc­tions on Ira­nian oil, allow­ing for it to be freely sold to gain needed income after months under block­ade.

Both ver­sions also say Iran will com­mit to fur­ther talks on the fate of the nuc­lear pro­gram and recom­mit to not develop a nuc­lear weapon — however, that long-stand­ing claim was belied in the past by the pre­war pro­cessing of uranium to near-weapons-grade pur­ity.

Chan­nel 12 described its ver­sion as an “out­line.” The Al Arabiya ver­sion con­tains fuller sec­tions, but also pas­sages that seem at-odds with Amer­ican claims that frozen funds will only be released in accord­ance with meas­ur­able pro­gress — with the excep­tion of “small antes” of money described Monday as a truth­build­ing effort.

“The United States under­takes that, in light of the pro­gress of nego­ti­ations towards a final agree­ment, frozen

or restric­ted funds and assets of the Islamic Repub­lic of Iran will be released and made fully avail­able,” the Al Arabiya ver­sion says.

“These funds, whether held in the mas­ter account or trans­ferred, will be used for any final bene­fi­ciary pay­ment determ­ined by the Cent­ral Bank of the Islamic Repub­lic of Iran and will be fully avail­able for use.”

GOP revolt?

That word­ing, if enacted in the actual doc­u­ment, could cause a revolt among con­gres­sional Repub­lic­ans fear­ful of a replay of Pres­id­ent Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuc­lear deal, through which an estim­ated $50 bil­lion in frozen funds were released, includ­ing air­lif­ted pal­lets of cash, which did little to curb Iran’s fuel­ing of regional con­flicts or its nuc­lear ambi­tions.

Neither ver­sion cla­ri­fies the future status of the Strait of Hor­muz, which Ira­nian offi­cials hope to toll in con­junc­tion with Oman — though US offi­cials said Monday they expect to con­firm the per­man­ent toll-free status in sub­sequent talks and Trump has threatened to bomb Oman if it part­ners with Iran to impose tolls.

Amer­ica’s ally in the war, Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Net­an­yahu, admit­ted Monday he hadn’t been provided with a copy of the agree­ment.

Vice Pres­id­ent JD Vance’s sales pitch for the Iran deal is simply ter­rible — but Pres­id­ent Trump’s may be worse. Maybe the report­ing on what’s in the Memor­andum of Under­stand­ing is wrong, but Team Trump keeps con­firm­ing some of the worst news. As best we can tell, the deal does noth­ing to achieve the aims Amer­ica star­ted the war with — but does hand Tehran a whole series of gains.

Iran gets at least a few bil­lion in imme­di­ate funds and can start selling oil right away, with at least some other sanc­tions dropped as well. More, it wins unpre­ced­en­ted author­ity over the Strait of Hor­muz and likely locks in Hezbol­lah’s dom­in­ance of Lebanon.

Recall our goals: The prez opened com­bat seek­ing to per­man­ently end Iran’s nuc­lear threat, and also elim­in­ate its mis­siles and other offens­ive cap­ab­il­it­ies, and we also hoped for regime change.

The bomb­ing set back its nuke pro­grams, took out a lot of mis­siles and mis­sile factor­ies and decap­it­ated most of the regime’s top lead­er­ship. All the talks since the start of April have done noth­ing more — indeed, have only let new Ira­nian lead­ers rebuild and regroup, even as the popu­lace suf­fers. Why will they change in 60 more days of talk?

Vance’s happy case is that the big prizes for Iran are con­tin­gent on its beha­vior; as he said on “Han­nity”: “If they’re will­ing to behave like a nor­mal coun­try,” quit chas­ing nukes and fund­ing ter­ror, “then we are will­ing to actu­ally fun­da­ment­ally trans­form our rela­tion­ship with them.” But that’s been true ever since the 1979 revolu­tion, and the regime has never gone for it.

Trump, talk­ing with Qatar’s ruler (!), actu­ally claimed the regime has changed, since we killed off so many lead­ers and those who wound up in charge “are very rational people,” “nice to deal with,” “not rad­ic­al­ized.”

Huh? It’s the lead­ers of the Islamic Revolu­tion­ary Guard Corps call­ing the shots over there now — the goons most com­mit­ted to the rad­ical agenda. Vance, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kush­ner never talked to them, only to polit­ical fronts for the real powers.

And it’s easy to be “nice” when the nego­ti­ations are hand­ing you win after win.

Trump’s proud that Tehran prom­ises to stick to only peace­ful nuc­lear pro­grams, but it’s never stopped mak­ing that prom­ise even as it’s never ceased doing the oppos­ite.

“We’ve never had this level of dir­ect com­mu­nic­a­tion with the Ira­nian lead­er­ship,” Vance bragged on “Han­nity.” Again: They weren’t talk­ing to the real lead­ers.

Sad­der still, he claimed: “We’re see­ing even people that I would have assumed are hard­liners who are kind of say­ing, ‘Maybe it was a mis­take for us to do the things that we’ve done over the last 40 years. Maybe we should turn over a new leaf in the rela­tion­ship with the United States of Amer­ica.’ ”

They were slaughter­ing 40,000 of their own civil­ians just months ago; sud­denly they’re going to get “nor­mal”?

No: “Hard­liner vs. mod­er­ate” is just a good cop-bad cop schtick the Ira­ni­ans have pulled on West­ern­ers for dec­ades — right along with pre­tend­ing regret over the past.

It’s bey­ond fool­ish to think the Ira­ni­ans have changed just because they say so.

It seems to us that Team Trump doesn’t want to use force to open the Strait, it’s pan­ick­ing over oil prices and the midterms and just wants to for­get its prom­ises to help the Ira­nian people.

We’d love to be proven wrong, and they haven’t given away the whole store yet. Other than the cash Tehran takes in at the start, Wash­ing­ton can with­draw its prom­ises as read­ily as the Ira­ni­ans always do theirs.

Cross your fin­gers that the next 60 days show that Iran really has changed — or that the prez and his brain­trust have come to their senses.“

 

January 6 defendants pursue millions in claims through obscure federal process

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“January 6 defendants are pursuing millions in compensation from the Trump administration through the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The FTCA allows individuals wronged by the government to file claims for monetary damages, and the justice department has complete discretion over whether to settle these claims. This process could provide a way for the Trump administration to compensate those responsible for the January 6 violence, despite bipartisan opposition to a similar “anti-weaponization fund.”

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Federal Tort Claims Act, over which DoJ has total discretion, provides workaround to Trump’s $1.8bn slush fund

Sam Levine

Pro-Trump protesters occupy the US Capitol, including the inaugural stage and viewing stands, in Washington DC, on 6 January 2021. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

January 6 defendants who assaulted police officers are pursuing legal claims for millions in compensation from the Trump administration using an obscure federal process with minimal oversight, but which offers the Trump administration a way to compensate those responsible for violence even after scrapping its “anti-weaponization fund”.

The defendants are pursuing their claims using the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows individuals wronged by the government to file claims for monetary damages. The justice department has complete and unchecked discretion over whether to settle the claims, giving the Trump administration a powerful vehicle to reward those responsible for violence on January 6. The claims would be paid out from the judgment fund, a perpetual appropriation allowed for by Congress and the same pot of money Trump’s $1.8bn slush fund was going to draw from. All of the defendants seeking compensation received a pardon from Trump.

There was fierce bipartisan pushback to the “anti-weaponization fund” proposed by the administration last month after Trump reached a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service. In particular, members of Congress were concerned that people who harmed law enforcement officers on January 6 might receive compensation. “If you’ve been convicted of assault on a cop ... doesn’t seem to me like people who are victims,” Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, told NBC News.

While the “anti-weaponization fund” appears to be on ice for now, FTCA claims and lawsuits could provide another avenue for payouts.

“It risks turning the judgment fund into exactly the sort of slush fund that the ‘anti-weaponization’ was going to be,” said Rupa Bhattacharyya, a former director in the civil division’s tort branch at the justice department, who worked on FTCA claims and now is the legal director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law.

“If the treasury department is not going to enforce the restrictions on the use of the judgment fund, which is to settle impending or imminent lawsuits where there’s some risk of liability, then there’s no limit on what you can use that judgment fund money for, so long as someone files a bogus claim,” she said.

The justice department agreed to settle FTCA claims filed by Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser, and Carter Page, Trump’s foreign policy adviser, for $1.25m each earlier this year.

Many of the January 6 defendants are represented by Peter Ticktin, a Florida attorney who is a longtime friend of Trump. He said he’s filed around 400 FTCA claims on behalf of January 6 defendants and expects to start frequently filing lawsuits now that the six month waiting period has expired.

There may also be advantages to pursuing compensation through FTCA claims instead of the weaponization fund, said Mark McCloskey, a Missouri attorney who is representing many January 6 defendants. There were no restrictions on who could apply to the weaponization fund, making the pool of applicants so big that it could lower the per capita recovery, he said.

“The weaponization fund, for the brief fleeting moment which it allegedly existed, had no policies, procedures, or anything that would indicate what kind of evidence they would have required, what kind of format of a filing they would have required, or anything like that,” he said. “I never thought the weaponization fund, as a practical matter, was very meaningful. Whereas the FTCA gives you a statute with teeth that you can, as long as you can prove your claim, you have a right to recovery.”

Among those seeking money are Kenneth Joseph Thomas, an Ohio man who was sentenced to nearly five years in prison after being found guilty for assaulting several police officers. Video showed him shoving multiple police officers and throwing himself into a line of officers as he shouted for other rioters to “hold the fucking line”. Also seeking compensation is John George Todd III, a Missouri man sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty on several charges, including injuring a Capitol police officer.

Both men are among nine plaintiffs seeking at least $1m each in damages in an FTCA suit filed 29 May in Washington DC. They say they are entitled to damages because they were unfairly and vindictively prosecuted by the government.

Andrew Taake, a Houston man sentenced to six years in prison and who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers with bear spray and a whip-like weapon, is also seeking at least $2.5m in damages. Taake is entitled to damages because he received inadequate medical treatment and an unfair trial, his lawyers said in their FTCA lawsuit, filed last September in Washington.

Bhattacharyya said she believed the justice department could defend itself against the “malicious prosecution type claims” the January 6 defendants were bringing, and she hoped it would do so. When Trump filed his $10bn lawsuit against the IRS, the justice department did not try to defend itself against the suit.

“Most of these plaintiffs were indicted by grand juries, brought before a court. Many of them pled guilty, others were convicted, they were sentenced by judges, and so those sorts of malicious prosecution claims are eminently defensible,” she said.

Those who pleaded guilty or were convicted of assaulting police officers should still be entitled to payouts, McCloskey said. “The vast majority of people that pled guilty to or were found guilty of such offenses were either coerced into confessions based on threats of life imprisonment and threats against their family or went to trial in courts where the evidence was faked, rigged, perjury was testified to and fair trials were not had,” he said. There is no evidence of wrongdoing in the January 6 prosecutions.

In Taake’s case, the Trump administration is defending itself against the claims and seeking to have them thrown out. In February, a federal prosecutor in Washington wrote that many of the claims should be thrown out since the lawsuit did not name proper defendants and certain requirements weren’t met before the suit was filed.

The Trump administration faced immediate and bipartisan backlash after it announced it was creating the loosely controlled $1.8bn fund to resolve a $10bn lawsuit filed by Trump related to the leak of his tax returns. Some Republicans objected strongly to the idea that those who assaulted police officers could receive payouts.

“The concern my constituents and I have is that money possibly going to folks who hit cops,” Nick LaLota, a Republican congressman from New York, told NBC News. “Especially when there is video evidence, they shouldn’t get a dime from our government.”

Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator from California, introduced legislation last month that would bar anyone convicted of an offense related to January 6 from receiving a payout from the federal government. Among other things, the bill would amend the FTCA to prohibit those who were pardoned for actions related to January 6 from being eligible for claims.

“President Donald Trump still wants to pay off violent insurrectionists who attacked police officers on January 6th, despite any claims from members of his administration that say otherwise,” Schiff said in a statement. “Our taxpayer dollars should not be used to pay out criminals, and we can pass a law right now to prevent this president or any future administration from paying off their friends and political allies.”

 

This Senator Is an Internet Sensation. Is He Running for President?

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“Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, a vulnerable Democratic incumbent, is gaining national attention for his fiery rhetoric against President Trump. Despite his focus on his re-election campaign, Ossoff’s critiques of the Trump administration have resonated with Democrats and garnered him a large online following. While Ossoff denies any presidential ambitions, his growing popularity and fundraising prowess have led some to speculate about his potential candidacy in 2028.

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The 39-year-old senator has become an internet sensation for Democrats seeking a 2028 contender. He says he’s focused on winning a second term in November.

June 17, 2026Updated 9:42 a.m. ET

Jon Ossoff of Georgia is the only Senate Democrat seeking re-election in a state President Trump won in 2024.Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

By Reid J. Epstein and Patricia Mazzei

Reid J. Epstein has reported on Jon Ossoff since 2017. He reported from Washington. Patricia Mazzei reported from Atlanta and Sandersville, Ga.

As the most vulnerable Democratic senator seeking re-election this year, Jon Ossoff of Georgia would rather do most other things than talk about whether he wants to run for president in 2028.

A lot has gone right for Mr. Ossoff over the last 19 months. The first-term senator has proved to be a formidable fund-raiser. His fiery rhetoric accusing President Trump of corruption has drawn an online audience of millions. Gov. Brian Kemp, the state’s most popular Republican, passed on running against him.

And on Tuesday, Georgia Republicans nominated Representative Mike Collins, a Trump loyalist, to face Mr. Ossoff in the fall. The Democrat has already dubbed Mr. Collins a presidential “puppet” after working quietly for months to undermine Derek Dooley, the Republican who lost.

Despite his relentless disavowals that he has any interest in seeking the presidency, Mr. Ossoff is now regularly mentioned as a potential 2028 contender. There’s good reason for him not to talk about it: Georgia remains a difficult state for Democrats to win, and Mr. Ossoff, the only Democratic incumbent seeking re-election in a state that Mr. Trump won in 2024, can’t afford to turn away from the immediate challenge.

“He is not trying to be a national star,” said Jason Carter, who is the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter and has run for statewide office in Georgia. “He’s trying to be a good senator. If being a good senator turns you into a national star, we’ll all watch and see.”

A laserlike focus on his Senate race may wind up boosting Mr. Ossoff’s national profile.

Other Democrats considering presidential bids are rolling out policy proposals, visiting early primary states, hitting the podcast circuit, becoming regulars on cable news or making themselves unavoidable for comment.

Mr. Ossoff has attracted large crowds to his rallies, and large online followings with clips of his fiery speeches criticizing President Trump.Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

Mr. Ossoff has done none of that, instead stumping around Georgia and insisting that’s where his focus lies. Mr. Ossoff has repeatedly denied any desire to run for president — “zero interest,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Yet his argument — that the Trump administration is fundamentally corrupt and threatens American democracy — is resonating on the ground and online, with a helpful boost from his Senate campaign.

His rallies are filmed and produced by his campaign team and have turned his digressions about the perils of the Trump administration into viral content for a growing audience of admirers. Footage is quickly circulated on social media. The broad reach of the clips has created for Mr. Ossoff the sort of exposure other Democrats can only dream of.

At a rally in February, Mr. Ossoff coined the term “Epstein class” to define Mr. Trump and his big-donor allies. The phrase instantly caught on with Democrats. At another rally, he targeted Mr. Trump, his family and his administration as “corrupt” and uninterested in helping regular Americans afford gas and groceries.

Even Hasan Piker, the left-wing, pro-Palestinian streamer, recently ranked Mr. Ossoff, a moderate Jewish senator, third on his presidential wish list, behind only progressive Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California.

Mr. Ossoff wasted no time in framing Mr. Collins as unacceptable. After the results were in Tuesday night, the senator called his general election opponent “a notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist currently under federal investigation for the illegal misuse of tax dollars.”

Mr. Collins, in his victory speech, called Mr. Ossoff “a far-left liberal” and said the contest would be a challenge. “Jon Ossoff is going to have millions and millions of dollars poured in here from his New York and California buddies, the political establishment, the mainstream media and the global elites,” Mr. Collins told supporters.

The liberal attraction to Mr. Ossoff comes at a moment when his party, with no majorities in Congress and a dysfunctional and cash-strapped national committee, suffers from a leadership vacuum. Even with a score or more of potential presidential candidates, Democrats across the political spectrum are pining for a presidential contender around whom they can build a movement.

Mr. Ossoff has no signature policy agenda; he has been largely focused on Senate oversight of the Trump administration. He does not mix it up on social media as many of his Senate colleagues do. He sometimes conjures the winning political style of former President Barack Obama, from the cadence of his speeches to the stylized “O” logos at his rallies.

Yet his singular idea for what his party’s direction should be is resonating: Take the country back from Mr. Trump. And he delivers his searing critiques in a way that few other Democrats have been able to do, with crisp lines that travel well on social media.

Mr. Trump: “A failed president and a national disgrace.” The president’s sons: “Prince Eric and Prince Don.” The administration? “The Mar-a-Lago mafia.”

“A wave is building,” Mr. Ossoff told rapt supporters at a rally in Atlanta last month. “The kind that comes once a generation, when people have been pushed too far, and they decide all at once and all together that enough is enough.”

Mr. Ossoff, who declined an interview request for this article, grew up comfortably before entering national politics at age 29 in 2017. Although he lost a special election for a suburban Atlanta House seat that year, the nearly four-point race became an early sign of Democratic resurgence during Trump’s first term.

Four years later, he became the youngest senator elected to the chamber in 40 years, and one with little life experience, having worked only as a congressional aide and documentary film executive.

Republicans and Democrats alike say Mr. Ossoff must not take winning in November for granted. Though Democratic votes outnumbered Republican ones by more than 150,000 ballots in last month’s primary for governor, the party still lost two state Supreme Court races.

Democrats believe Mr. Collins’s avowed MAGA loyalty could hurt him among moderate and independent voters in a state that has been trending purple for several years. Mr. Ossoff makes a point of weaving him into his attacks on Mr. Trump.

Representative Mike Collins won the Republican Senate primary runoff on Tuesday. Audra Melton for The New York Times

At one recent rally, Mr. Ossoff dismissed Mr. Collins, whose father served in Congress for 12 years and also ran for the Senate, as “a congressman only because his daddy was a congressman.” He called him “pro-war, pro-tariff and pro-cutting your health care.”

Clipped and packaged for social media, the video received more than 1.8 million views on X.

Mr. Ossoff’s aides and supporters say the rallies have two core functions: drive local enthusiasm and boost national fund-raising.

“He thinks he needs to raise $200 million, and we don’t have $200 million just in Georgia,” said Lawrence Bell, a former top aide to Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia.

Mr. Ossoff will indeed need a lot of money this year. Senate Leadership Fund, the main Senate Republican super PAC, has earmarked $44 million for the race. Its Democratic counterpart, Senate Majority PAC, reserved its first $20 million in television ads last month. Both groups, in addition to others, are likely to spend far more by November.

The Ossoff campaign has already raised $81 million and spent $53 million, according to his Federal Election Commission report.

Back home, voters say Mr. Ossoff’s focus on how the Trump administration is hurting their daily lives is resonating.

Reece Windjack, 25, a church choir teacher, drove about five hours from his home in rural Baxley, Ga., to see Mr. Ossoff in person. He said he appreciated that Mr. Ossoff focused both on corruption and health care. Mr. Windjack said he is uninsured, like many of his friends and neighbors, who go either without coverage or without enough of it.

“He doesn’t forget about small-town America, even when he’s fighting the Trump administration,” he said.

Even Republicans working to defeat him have admired his political acumen. Mr. Dooley, who lost to Mr. Collins in Tuesday’s runoff, said in a radio interview this month that Mr. Ossoff has “really good constituent services.”

“You never really see him grandstanding on CNN,” Mr. Dooley told a small gathering this month in rural Sandersville, Ga. “You don’t see him standing next to Chuck Schumer, A.O.C., waving the party flag.”

Reid J. Epstein is a Times reporter covering campaigns and elections from Washington.

Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.“

 

Obama’s Nuclear Deal Looms Over Trump’s Iran Negotiations

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“President Trump is under pressure to improve upon the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran, which he criticized for its weaknesses. While Trump’s new agreement with Iran is a temporary cease-fire and a commitment to negotiate, it lacks the specific benchmarks and technical details of the 2015 deal. The success of Trump’s approach hinges on his ability to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement that addresses Iran’s nuclear program, missile arsenal, and support for terrorism.

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President Trump is under pressure to significantly improve upon the Obama-era deal in order to justify the huge human and economic cost of taking the United States to war.

Published June 16, 2026Updated June 17, 2026, 9:11 a.m. ET

President Trump campaigned against the Obama-era deal as far back as 2015, and ultimately killed it during his first term over the objections of many of his top national security aides. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents, and reported on the Iranian nuclear program for more than 20 years.

Only minutes into a phone call to a New York Times reporter to explain the deal he had just agreed to with Iran, President Trump turned to an issue that clearly grates on him: the comparisons to the deal that President Barack Obama struck with Tehran in 2015.

The Obama deal, he said on Sunday evening, repeating a well-worn line, was “a disaster.”

“It was a road to a nuclear weapon and ours is a wall against a nuclear weapon in the truest sense of the word,” Mr. Trump said. “So let’s start there.”

Mr. Trump’s sensitivity is easy to understand. He campaigned against the Obama-era deal as far back as 2015, and ultimately killed it during his first term over the objections of many of his top national security aides. At the time, he had a long list of complaints about its failings. The 2015 accord “lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity,” Mr. Trump said in a 2018 speech, and “no limits at all on its other malign behavior,” especially its support of terror activities around the Middle East.

On Wednesday, as the Group of 7 summit in France wrapped up, Mr. Trump heaped more scorn on the 2015 deal and his predecessor, including for unfreezing $1.7 billion in Iranian funds held in foreign banks, something his own pending accord envisions on a larger scale. “And you know what the Iranians did?” he asked reporters. “They laughed at Obama, and they said he’s a stupid son of a bitch.”

Now the moment of reckoning has come for Mr. Trump. He is caught in what could best be described as the Obama-deal bind.

The accord he described on Sunday is simply a cease-fire and an agreement to fully open the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days. It commits both sides to begin negotiating on the future of the nuclear program. So for now, there is no way to compare the old and new deals; they are completely different in nature.

Tehran on Monday. President Trump’s accord commits both sides to begin negotiating on the future of the nuclear program.Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

Yet Mr. Trump clearly knows he must significantly improve upon Mr. Obama’s results in order to justify the huge human and economic cost of taking the United States to war over the past three months.

The 2015 deal resulted in shipping about 97 percent of Iran’s nuclear stockpile at the time out of the country. The fate of the current stockpile, a far more dangerous one, is undetermined, and Mr. Trump sounded on Tuesday as if he was in no rush to get the nuclear material out of Iranian territory. There is no resolution about how to deal with future nuclear research and enrichment activities inside Iran, or whether all of its major nuclear sites will be shut down. There is no discussion yet about limits on its missiles or of resumed support for what is left of militias it supports, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Vice President JD Vance has acknowledged the scope of the tasks ahead, which begin Friday in Switzerland as soon as he and Iran’s top parliamentarian conduct a ceremonial signing of the memorandum of understanding. Mr. Trump insists that it won’t be that hard. “We have our deal done with Iran,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday at the Group of 7. “It goes to a second stage, which I think will be actually easier.”

He may be the only one who thinks so. The 2015 deal took 18 months to negotiate. It is more than 150 pages long, filled with specific benchmarks of progress and technical annexes, including pages on how the nuclear program was to be monitored and inspected.

“What he has to do is even harder than what we had to do in 2015, because we did not have to deal with a stockpile of uranium close to what is needed for a nuclear weapon,” said Wendy Sherman, who led the 2015 negotiating team. And, Ms. Sherman argued, the Trump administration has yet to assemble the kind of team they will require: “You need lawyers, Treasury experts, energy experts, inspection experts.”

President Barack Obama fielding questions on the his administration’s nuclear deal in 2015. Mr. Trump has called that deal “a disaster.”Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

In fact, in the run-up to the 2015 negotiations, the hotels where the accord was being hammered out were jammed with such expertise. That included Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary who was also a nuclear weapons expert; the C.I.A.’s chief of Iran intelligence; and Americans who had worked with inspection teams from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

With a 60-day sprint ahead, beginning Friday, to reach a deal, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have clearly been racing to assemble a similar team. A few weeks ago they visited the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a day with nuclear experts on such arcana as what kind of equipment would be required to recover the 60-percent enriched uranium and “downblend,” or dilute, it. They are expected to be nearby as talks begin in Switzerland.

The Iranians are hardly showing up unprepared. The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who is the main interlocutor with Mr. Witkoff, was the No. 2 Iranian official at the talks 11 years ago. At that time, he often briefed reporters, and it was evident that he had an encyclopedic knowledge of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, from its uranium mining operations to its enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo, to the critical operations at Isfahan, where Iran was developing the ability to turn uranium to a metallic form — which could be fashioned into a warhead. (All three sites were hit with American bunker-busting bombs or missiles a year ago this weekend, in “Operation Midnight Hammer,” which left many of Iran’s most critical nuclear facilities under rubble.)

Mr. Trump’s national security team is brimming with confidence, at least in public, that when negotiations start up, they will hold cards the Obama team never enjoyed.

“Obama, they begged Iran for a deal,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “We bombed Iran, and then put in a blockade,” he said, and resumed bombing a week ago “to ensure that they come to the table for a great deal.” He insisted that the American military would remain offshore to make sure the Iranians “live up to what they said they would do.”

Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, left, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, have been racing to assemble a team with nuclear expertise ahead of the negotiations.Doug Mills/The New York Times

“They didn’t have the threat of military force the way that we do,” Mr. Hegseth said of the Obama team.

Mr. Trump picked up on that theme in his call on Sunday, saying, “I believe they have had enough,” and noting that the Iranians had been hit by two waves of American attacks. “We were going in for the big one,” he said, adding: “And we made a deal right after that.”

What Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth left out of their account is that the Iranians have plenty of cards of their own this time that they lacked 11 years ago. They have discovered a diplomatic superpower: the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz just by dropping a few mines and launching a few drones. That is enough to make shipowners and captains hesitate before taking the risk of running through the narrow waterway. The Iranians also have shown they can reach and destroy water desalination plants, American radar arrays and petrochemical plants across the region.

And back in 2015, the most potent nuclear material Iran possessed was enriched to only 20 percent purity, which would have required weeks or months of further enrichment to be useful in a bomb. Now they have 60 percent enriched fuel, which can be turned into bomb-grade in days or weeks — if they can dig it out of the rubble of Isfahan without getting caught.

In his interview, Mr. Trump repeatedly came back to the Obama accord, stating incorrectly that it would have “allowed them to enrich all the way up to a nuclear weapon.” In fact, it limited enrichment to 3.67 percent, which is used for reactors, not atomic weapons. But one of the flaws of the Obama accord, as Mr. Trump noted in the 2016 presidential campaign, is that it allowed the Iranians to keep working on next-generation centrifuges and conducting very limited enrichment.

And the Obama deal was designed to expire in 2030. Mr. Trump talked in the interview about the possibility of agreeing to a 15-to-20-year suspension of enrichment activities in the coming negotiations, meaning the deal would essentially lift restrictions between 2041 and 2046. That would buy some time. But buying time was the strategy of the Obama deal as well.

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz in June. The Iranians have discovered they have a diplomatic superpower: the ability to shut down the strait.Reuters

The real challenge for Mr. Trump may be getting past his own rhetoric — including that speech in 2018 that took on Mr. Obama’s deal for what it failed to accomplish.

The 2015 agreement had plenty of flaws. The Iranians refused to negotiate over the size of their missile arsenal or its range. The new memorandum of understanding is apparently silent on the topic, so the issue will have to be dealt with in the next round of negotiations.

The 2015 deal did not prevent Iran from funding terror groups. There is also apparently nothing in the memorandum on that topic, or of its treatment of protesters and dissidents to whom Mr. Trump promised, earlier this year, “help is on the way.” (In a social media post on Jan. 13, he also urged them to “take over your institutions.”)

In his call on Sunday, Mr. Trump insisted that Iran would only get sanctions relief if it changed its behavior, including refraining from shooting protesters. But he also indicated he was in no hurry to seize that uranium or get it out of the country. Sitting under the rubble, he noted, it poses no imminent threat.

So the big question is whether there will be a follow-on deal at all. “He hasn’t gotten to the second part of anything — in Ukraine or Gaza,” said Ms. Sherman, who went on to be deputy secretary of state under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

But if he does go the distance, if he successfully negotiates every concession he insists the Iranians are now ready to make in return for financial incentives, then he may well have an accord that goes well beyond the 2015 deal.

He just doesn’t have it yet.

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.“