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Iran Conflict 2026
11SEP

Trump declares the Iran deal over

2 min read
09:25UTC

Trump called the interim Iran agreement over and a waste of time, while Tehran said US and Israeli actions had gutted it; neither side has formally withdrawn.

ConflictDeveloping
Key takeaway

Trump calls the deal over and Iran calls it violated, yet neither has formally torn it up.

President Donald Trump said the interim agreement with Iran is "over" and "a waste of time dealing with them" after the 7 July strikes and Iran's retaliation, while adding that negotiations would continue. 1 The agreement in question is the 18 June Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), a 14-point ceasefire-track text the two sides were still negotiating in Doha last week. Trump's words have carried this message for 120 days; this time a signed licence revocation sits behind them.

Iran's foreign ministry said US and Israeli actions had "rendered key and fundamental elements of the agreement to end the war ineffective". 2 Chief negotiator Mohammad Ghalibaf called both the strikes and the oil-waiver revocation "major violations" of the MOU, putting the financial instrument alongside the kinetic one in Tehran's own complaint. 3 Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei neither claimed nor denied the Al Rekayyat strike, instead invoking Clause 5 of the memorandum to assert an Iranian right to administer Hormuz routing . 4

Neither side has formally withdrawn from the memorandum both were negotiating in Doha, where Trump, Baqaei and Qatar's spokesman gave three contradicting accounts of the same talks and Doha itself billed the round as positive progress . Each capital is now retiring verbal tools for signed ones: Washington swaps Truth Social posts for a licence revocation, Tehran swaps anonymous IRIB framing for a named-spokesman treaty claim. The next Doha round stays paused with no firm late-July date fixed despite Pakistani expectations of one , so the memorandum is decaying rather than dying, and the 17 July licence cliff now arrives before any diplomacy resumes.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The Memorandum of Understanding, or MoU, is a 14-point agreement reached on 18 June between the US and Iran that was meant to wind down the war, a written understanding rather than a ratified treaty. President Trump said the agreement was 'over' and 'a waste of time' after the day's strikes and oil-waiver revocation. Iran's foreign ministry said US and Israeli actions had made key parts of the deal ineffective, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, called the day's events 'major violations' of the MoU. Neither side has formally withdrawn from the agreement in writing; both are simply saying, in different words, that it no longer functions.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The MoU has no enforcement mechanism written into its 14 points; unlike the JCPOA's IAEA verification architecture, it relies entirely on both governments' continued political willingness to reference it, which is why either side can call it ineffective without triggering a formal breach process.

Ghalibaf's move to frame the oil-waiver revocation and strikes together as violations serves a parliamentary function: the Majlis voted 221-0 in April to suspend IAEA cooperation, and casting the MoU as US-violated first gives hardliners in that body grounds to block future civilian-negotiated re-engagement without appearing to reject diplomacy outright.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    Neither side formally exiting the MoU while both call it dead risks a legal vacuum where future strikes or sanctions carry no agreed reference point for de-escalation.

  • Precedent

    Ghalibaf's parliamentary framing echoes the Majlis's earlier unilateral IAEA suspension, suggesting Iran's legislature, not its foreign ministry, now controls the diplomatic off-ramp.

First Reported In

Update #149 · The first thing Washington signed on Iran: a revocation

ABC News· 8 Jul 2026
Read original
Different Perspectives
Turkey
Turkey
Golden Global Portfoy Yonetimi closed three funds to new money a day after telling regulators they were legally separate from its sanctioned parent, and the central bank held its rate at 37 per cent citing energy-driven inflation risk. Ankara is absorbing balance-sheet and monetary costs from a war it is not fighting.
Qatar
Qatar
Qatar's foreign ministry said it was coordinating with China during a Beijing visit to restart negotiations, while filing hundreds of letters at the UN documenting Iranian strikes on its own civilian facilities. Doha is mediating for a neighbour it is also formally accusing, a contradiction the referral's clean vote count does not show.
China and Russia
China and Russia
China and Russia voted against the IAEA referral alongside Niger, and Iran's ambassador told the Board that inspections were impossible during a war Iran did not start. Beijing is separately mediating between Doha and Tehran, meaning the same power blocking the West's legal track is running the diplomatic one that might actually end the war.
Jordan
Jordan
Jordan said it intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian ballistic missiles fired at its territory on 8 September, the war's first sustained salvo against a state that is not a combatant. Amman's 90 per cent interception rate held, but a tenfold jump in missiles fired in a single volley raises what the next one might carry.
United States
United States
CENTCOM said its strikes disabled five Iranian tankers only after two failed missile attempts on a US warship, and Treasury moved the same week to a presumption of denial on all Iran licences. Washington now treats commercial shipping and financial plumbing as one enforcement front rather than two separate tracks.
Iran / IRGC
Iran / IRGC
Iran's foreign ministry called the CENTCOM tanker strikes a war crime and a breach of the UN Charter, while the IRGC named two US destroyers it says it damaged without releasing images. Tehran expects the claims, unverifiable either way, to sustain domestic morale after losing five tankers in a single day.