Israel is not a party to the MOU and has explicitly said it does not consider itself bound by it. Defence Minister Katz stated the Israeli army will remain in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza indefinitely. Far-right National Security Minister Ben-Gvir: "Trump's agreement does not bind us." This is the highest-probability trigger for the deal to collapse during the 60-day window. Iran has grounds to walk out of nuclear talks the moment Israel conducts a significant operation in southern Lebanon.

Global markets soared on the announcement. Oil dropped more than $4 per barrel. The Strait carries roughly 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas. Its four-month closure had added materially to global inflation. This is the provision with the most immediate economic impact worldwide and the least dispute between the parties.

The naval blockade and Hormuz closure were effectively mirror measures — each side strangling the other's economic artery. Their simultaneous removal is the single agreed element that benefits both parties most immediately and most tangibly. It is also why global markets reacted so positively to the announcement.

The contradiction here is not interpretive — it is structural. Either sanctions relief is immediate or it is conditional. Both governments are describing the same document in mutually exclusive terms. The resolution of this contradiction will be the first real test of whether the MOU means what each side says it means. If Iran expects immediate sanctions relief and the US withholds it pending compliance, the 60-day talks could collapse before they begin.

For context: the entire Marshall Plan for post-war European reconstruction was approximately $173 billion in today's dollars across four years. A $25 billion single-tranche release would be historically significant. The fact that the US is denying it while Iran is asserting it as a confirmed term is a warning sign for the durability of the agreement. Deals that both parties describe in contradictory terms tend not to survive implementation.

Iran's commitment to "never pursue nuclear weapons" costs Iran nothing — it has maintained this position for twenty years. The IAEA confirmed in early June that Iran had more than 400kg of uranium enriched to 60%. Enrichment above 20% has no legitimate civilian use. The verbal commitments the US is citing as evidence Iran agreed to more than the text shows are not binding. The history of US-Iran negotiations is a history of verbal commitments not surviving the transition to written text. The 60-day talks exist precisely because this question was not resolved in the MOU.

Iran has the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. Multiple US military bases across the region are within range. Israel is entirely within range. The missile programme is Iran's primary conventional deterrent against both Israel and the US. Iran agreeing to negotiate its missiles away would be structurally equivalent to agreeing to remove its conventional defence capability. It is not going to happen in 60 days and the US officials claiming missiles are in scope are almost certainly describing an aspirational negotiating position rather than an agreed agenda item.

Hezbollah survived the war with its military infrastructure substantially intact. The Houthis in Yemen were active throughout the conflict. Iran's proxy network is the core of its forward deterrence architecture — the ability to threaten Israel and US assets from multiple directions simultaneously without committing Iranian forces directly. Dismantling this network is not something Iran has ever agreed to in any negotiation and there is no credible evidence it has done so here. The US officials citing verbal commitments on proxies are describing a negotiating aspiration, not an agreed term.

This figure almost certainly represents Iran's opening position for the economic reconstruction track of the 60-day negotiations rather than a committed MOU term. Iran's economy has been severely damaged by the war, the Hormuz closure, the sanctions regime, and the February 28 strikes. Iran will be seeking maximum reconstruction support as part of any final agreement. Whether the US and its allies would ever commit to $300 billion is a different question entirely. The absence of any US acknowledgement of this figure suggests it is not in the agreed text.