US President Donald Trump has intervened directly in the final stages of backchannel diplomatic talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran, hardening Washington’s conditions for a pending peace memorandum and sending an updated draft directly to Tehran, The New York Times and Axios reported.
Situation room revisions
According to senior administration officials and sources familiar with the matter, President Trump convened a high-level review inside the White House Situation Room. During the session, Trump presented several specific proposals to amend the text of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that his own negotiators had spent weeks hammering out with Iranian representatives.
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While the precise clauses altered in the new draft have not been publicly disclosed, insiders noted that the president had previously expressed deep dissatisfaction with the initial version’s framework. The original draft dictated that the US would initiate discussions on a phased relaxation of the trade embargo and unlock a portion of frozen Iranian financial assets in exchange for compliance.
Despite US Vice President JD Vance recently stating that Washington and Tehran were incredibly close to an agreement, Trump’s last-minute demands have effectively restarted the clock, launching a fresh round of high-stakes negotiations that officials predict could take several days to resolve. Sources emphasized that Trump remains genuinely interested in securing the deal and hopes to sign it shortly, but refuses to concede strategic leverage on core economic and security points.
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The blueprint under review
The document under negotiation is designed to establish the foundational baseline for a complete cessation of hostilities between the two nations. To prevent the talks from stalling, the most contentious geopolitical disputes – including the long-term future of Iran’s uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons program – have been deferred to separate, subsequent phases of the treaty process.
The immediate primary objective of the MoU is to formalize a 60-day extension of the regional ceasefire originally brokered on April 7, which recently neared a total breakdown after a direct exchange of fire in the Strait of Hormuz. The war, initiated by the US and Israel, has severely disrupted global energy logistics since Iran closed off the Strait – a vital chokepoint commanding 20% of global crude oil shipments.
The underlying de-escalation roadmap requires Iran to completely clear its offensive naval mine networks within 30 days and guarantee unhindered shipping traffic. In exact reciprocity, the US would gradually suspend the unprecedented naval blockade it clamped onto Iranian ports in mid-April, matching the withdrawal of US warships directly to the volume of commercial shipping safely restored to the Gulf.
The preliminary framework also establishes a joint US-Iranian-IAEA engineering mission to excavate and neutralize enriched radioactive stockpiles – termed “Nuclear Dust” – trapped beneath mountains collapsed 11 months ago by American B-2 stealth bomber strikes.
A posture of “peace through strength”
As the updated document undergoes scrutiny in Tehran, the US military has made it explicitly clear that diplomacy will remain heavily backed by conventional military deterrence.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a firm warning regarding America’s immediate readiness to reactivate kinetic combat operations if the pending memorandum is rejected or violated.
“We are capable of resuming strikes if it becomes necessary… we are entirely ready for this,” Hegseth stated during the international forum. “We have sufficient reserves both in the region and across the world, so we are in a very good position.”
By pairing Trump’s calculated patience in extracting strict economic concessions with the Pentagon’s overt readiness to resume high-yield strikes, Washington aims to force Tehran into accepting an asymmetric peace deal that permanently preserves American leverage in the region.
