Trump undecided if he will attend the signing ceremony to end the Iran war
President Donald Trump may not attend a signing ceremony on Friday in Geneva for the deal aimed at ending the U.S.-Iran war.
The Trump administration has described the agreement as extending the ongoing ceasefire for the next two months, opening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports, while offering Iran phased relief from sanctions based on certain, unspecified benchmarks.
“Well, it depends,” the president told reporters on Monday from Évian-les-Bains, France, during the annual Group of 7 summit.
“JD’s coming in for it, he was originally going to do it,” he added of Vice President JD Vance. “I’ll probably be gone by then. We’re having dinner in a day and a half, right? We’re going to be staying quite late. So, I may be involved, I may not, but JD was coming in for that, specifically.”
The president was equally vague about when officials would release the full text of the memorandum of understanding between the warring nations.
“I think pretty soon I would say,” he said, adding that the deal was a “very powerful document.”
Trump administration officials say the terms of the deal could be released by midway through this week, while the president said in France that text would be shared with the public “sometime after Friday,” around the time of the signing ceremony.
Uncertainty also remains for parties beyond just the U.S. and Iran.
The U.S. kicked off the war in partnership with Israel, but the two allies do not always “don’t always see eye to eye,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday.
Pakistani and Iranian negotiators have described the peace deal as pausing conflict on all fronts of the regional war, including between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel, meanwhile, has vowed to continue operating indefinitely in Lebanon and Iran if need be.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I are leading a clear policy that determines that the IDF will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, without any time limit, to protect, from there, the border and Israeli communities against jihadist elements,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday in a statement.
At a news conference Monday, Netanyahu added that his country would take action to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons “with an agreement” or “without an agreement.”
Behind the scenes, Israeli leaders consider the agreement “terrible for Israel,” a senior official told Reuters.
