NARRATIVE: Iran's nuclear deal — 60 days to resolve what 20 years of diplomacy failed to achieve

The negotiators who did not sleep

At Bürgenstock, in Switzerland, the night of June 21–22, 2026 stretched into eighteen hours of negotiations. On one side: JD Vance, Vice President of the United States, and his delegation. On the other: Abbas Araghchi, Iran's Foreign Minister, and his team. Between them: mediators who had stayed up until dawn to keep the talks from collapsing — as they had nearly done the day before, when a "torrent of violent threats" from Donald Trump had pushed negotiators to the brink of breakdown. Then, in the morning, came the announcement: Iran was accepting the return of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In exchange: American sanctions relief on Iranian oil, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed a week earlier had just taken tangible form.

Vice President Vance called the return of the inspectors a "major milestone." Foreign Minister Araghchi said the first real test of the agreements would be the cessation of Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Mediators called the progress "important" — the diplomatic word for "at least we are not running toward war." And in global markets, oil had already responded: from $113 per barrel in late April, it had fallen to $78 by June 22. The markets believe in this deal — at least provisionally. The real question begins now: the 60 days the MOU sets for a comprehensive agreement.

The 14-point MOU — and its gray areas

The memorandum of understanding signed the week before the Bürgenstock negotiations is a 14-point document that sets the framework for a process intended to produce a comprehensive agreement within 60 days. It specifies that the United States and Iran have "agreed to resolve the management of stored enriched materials," with the minimum method being on-site blending down under IAEA supervision. A high-level political committee is mandated to oversee a process of "less than two months." The sanctions relief on oil is conditional — a 60-day waiver mechanism by the US Treasury is being prepared. Iranian assets frozen in Qatar are the subject of a separate agreement between Doha and Tehran.

The gray areas are numerous. The IAEA specifies that difficult discussions remain ahead on the scope and intrusiveness of the inspectors' mandate — particularly their access to Iranian nuclear sites that have been bombed. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi confirmed that inspectors will visit enrichment sites, but the details of access remain to be negotiated. The highly enriched uranium (HEU) stored in facilities such as Esfahan, Natanz, and Fordow must be managed in a way that is still to be determined. And Iran's ballistic missiles — which are not mentioned in the MOU according to available information — remain an unresolved issue.

Eighteen hours of negotiations at Bürgenstock to extract a framework agreement on 60 more days of negotiations. International diplomacy in all its slowness and fragility. This is not a criticism — it is a description. Every hour of negotiation that prevents military escalation is an hour of genuine value. But the scale of the obstacles that remain to be cleared in 60 days leaves me with a deep sense of caution about what this MOU will actually produce.

From the JCPOA to chaos: a timeline of failure

To understand why the 60 days are so ambitious, one must measure what twenty years of Iranian nuclear diplomacy have produced. In 2015, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) had seemed to resolve the problem: Iran reduced its enrichment capacities and accepted intrusive IAEA inspections in exchange for sanctions relief. The signing of the JCPOA was hailed as a first-order diplomatic achievement. In 2018, Trump (first administration) withdrew the United States from the agreement and reimposed sanctions — a decision he justified by the text's shortcomings on ballistic missiles and Iran's regional activities.

Since the American withdrawal of 2018, Iran has methodically rebuilt and surpassed its enrichment capacities. Advanced centrifuges have been installed. The uranium enrichment level climbed well beyond the JCPOA's limits. The IAEA lost access to several key sites, particularly following the Israeli-American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during the conflict of the prior summer. By summer 2026, Iran holds stocks of highly enriched uranium stored in underground facilities, some of which have been partially damaged. International oversight had been suspended. This is the context — not that of 2015 — that the Bürgenstock negotiators were trying to correct.

The strikes of summer 2025 and their consequences

The current situation cannot be told without accounting for the Israeli-American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in the summer of 2025. Those strikes partially damaged certain installations but did not eliminate Iran's capacity — a reality that non-proliferation experts had anticipated. They caused Iran to suspend its cooperation with the IAEA. They triggered the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran, sending oil prices soaring above $100 per barrel. And they paradoxically created the pressure that pushed both parties back to the negotiating table — Iranian economic distress and American pressure on energy markets.

The IAEA Director General confirmed that the agreement grants the agency access to Iranian enrichment sites. But he specified that "difficult discussions remain ahead" on access to bombed sites — some of which potentially contain stocks of highly enriched uranium in partially collapsed installations. Satellite imagery captured in June 2026 appears to show trucks transporting containers of enriched uranium toward the underground complex at Esfahan — a movement that complicates precisely the inventory the IAEA would want to establish.

The paradox of this situation is dizzying. The strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — intended to reduce the threat — have created a situation in which it is now harder to know where Iran's enriched uranium is than before the strikes. We struck to complicate the program, and we mostly complicated the ability to monitor it. This is a lesson on the non-linear effects of preemptive strikes that military strategists should have internalized long before pressing the button.

Four problems to solve, one impossible deadline

The MOU sets an ambitious agenda for the 60 days ahead. The problems to be solved number at least four, and each has resisted years or decades of negotiations. First: managing Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium — blending them down, diluting them, or transferring them under international supervision. Second: the enrichment level Iran will ultimately be permitted — a subject on which Tehran and Washington hold structurally distant positions. Third: the terms of access for IAEA inspectors, including to damaged sites. Fourth: the future of Iran's ballistic missile program — absent from the MOU but unavoidable for Israel and the Gulf states.

Each of these problems deserves substantive negotiations of several months at minimum. Placing all of them in a 60-day window amounts to an ambition that borders on unrealism — unless both parties are willing to accept formulations vague enough to be interpreted differently by each side. This is precisely what happened with the 2015 JCPOA — deliberate ambiguities that enabled the signing but sowed the seeds of future disagreement. History risks repeating itself, with the same ultimate consequences.

The actors not at the table — who still matter

The Bürgenstock negotiations took place between the United States and Iran, with mediators whose nationality was not specified in available sources. But several major actors are not at the table and will have a say over any agreement. Israel, whose strikes on Lebanon are cited by Araghchi as a precondition for Iranian trust, is not a party to the negotiations but holds a de facto operational veto — its ability to torpedo an agreement by striking unilaterally is documented and credible. The Gulf states — notably Saudi Arabia — have their own concerns about a powerful, nuclear-armed Iran. Russia and China, which have provided diplomatic support to Iran, have interests that are not necessarily aligned with a US-Iranian deal. None of these actors is neutral.

Qatar plays a particular role in this file. A recognized mediator in the region, it hosts regular negotiations and signed a memorandum concerning the release of Iranian assets frozen in Qatari bank accounts. The agreement provides that Iran will use these assets to purchase food commodities, including American soybeans — a requirement of Vance that allows American negotiators to present the deal as beneficial for US farmers. Geopolitics down to the level of a grain of wheat.

Those absent from a negotiating table often shape the outcome as much as those present. Israel can make or break this deal based on its military decisions on Lebanon. Saudi Arabia can signal its disapproval in ways that complicate implementation. Russia can fan the flames. In this context, a 60-day agreement that accounts for all these parallel dynamics is not merely difficult — it may be the most complex diplomatic exercise of the decade.

Grossi and the challenge of the bombed sites

The IAEA Director General, Rafael Grossi, is one of the key actors in this file — and one of the most exposed to contradictory demands. The United States wants intrusive inspections that allow them to verify Iran is not retaining hidden capacities. Iran wants inspections that do not constitute political humiliation and that do not expose its military installations to information usable for future strikes. These two demands are difficult to reconcile.

The specific challenge of bombed sites is even more complex. Installations that have been struck and partially destroyed may contain dispersed radioactive materials, damaged equipment, and incomplete records. Sending inspectors there requires access that Iran may consider an intrusion into its military — not merely civilian — installations. The precedent of IAEA access to Iranian military sites such as Parchin in previous years shows that this type of negotiation can take months, with no guaranteed outcome. Grossi's demand for access to the bombed sites is legitimate and necessary — but it is also politically explosive for Tehran.

The question of stored highly enriched uranium

The IAEA has confirmed that Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU) are held in facilities at Esfahan, Natanz, and Fordow. Under the MOU, these stocks will be managed according to "a mutually determined mechanism" with the minimum method being on-site blending down under IAEA supervision. This highly flexible wording means in practice that everything remains to be negotiated on the "how." Iran might prefer to dilute its HEU stocks into less-enriched uranium rather than transfer them — which would keep the material on its soil. The United States might prefer an out-of-country transfer, as was provided under the 2015 JCPOA with a transfer to Russia. This divergence is potentially insurmountable in 60 days.

Satellite images from early June 2026 showing what appears to be trucks transporting containers of enriched uranium toward the Esfahan complex are a worrying sign. Either Iran is preparing a consolidation of its stocks to facilitate oversight — which would be positive. Or it is seeking to move them to less accessible locations before inspectors arrive — which would be exactly the scenario Washington and Brussels dread. Distinguishing between these two interpretations is precisely the work of IAEA inspectors. Provided they can gain access.

Iran's highly enriched uranium is at the heart of everything. It represents the "breakout" capacity — the time needed to go from a stock of enriched uranium to a functional weapon. If Iran retains its HEU stocks, this capacity persists, even under inspection. The true measure of these 60 days' success will not be the diplomatic formulations of the final agreement — it will be the concrete question of what happens to that uranium. Everything else is paper.

The fall in crude as a metric of relief

The fact that oil markets responded immediately to the MOU by sending crude tumbling from $113 to $78 per barrel in a matter of weeks says something important: global economic operators believe sufficiently in this agreement to adjust their prices. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — through which a significant share of global oil exports transits — was a direct pressure on the global economy. Keeping it closed represented a war premium on the price of energy that Western economies were paying directly through inflation.

The KBC economic outlook for June 2026 incorporates this new reality: eurozone inflation forecasts are revised downward by 0.2 percentage points to 2.6 percent for 2026, largely thanks to the anticipated decline in energy prices. Oil at $73 is anticipated for end 2027 according to futures markets. These numbers illustrate how sharply the Iranian crisis had already produced concrete economic effects on Westerners — and how real the market relief, even if temporary, genuinely is.

Iran as a potentially reintegrated economic actor

One of the least publicly discussed but most important stakes in these negotiations is the economic reintegration of Iran into global commercial circuits. American sanctions had sharply reduced Iranian oil exports — even as China continued to import Iranian oil in violation of American secondary sanctions. The 60-day US Treasury waiver will allow Iran's central bank to sell oil primarily to China and receive payments without risk of reprisals. This is a limited opening — but symbolically and economically significant.

For Iran, the lifting of oil sanctions represents revenue its economy desperately needs. For global energy consumers, an increase in Iranian oil supply would help keep prices low — a direct benefit for European economies under inflationary pressure. Geopolitics and economics are aligned, at least temporarily, in favor of an agreement. This may be the primary reason why American negotiators agreed to sit at the same table as Tehran despite the context.

I look at the fall in oil from $113 to $78 and I wonder whether this is the result of successful diplomacy or a very costly optical illusion. Markets often believe what they want to believe, especially in the short term. If in 60 days the negotiations collapse and Hormuz closes again, we will have wasted precious time and oil will rebound higher than before. Cynicism about Iran-West agreements is not unjustified — recent history encourages caution.

A style that nearly derailed everything

The narrative of the Bürgenstock negotiations would be incomplete without mentioning the episode that almost wrecked them: the "torrent of violent threats" from Donald Trump that pushed the talks to the brink the day before the June 22 announcement. Trump, consistent with his maximum-pressure doctrine, had evidently chosen this moment of tension to double down — likely threatening military escalation or additional sanctions. The gamble is risky: such pressure can push a delegation to sign what it would not otherwise have signed, or it can blow up the negotiations entirely.

In this specific case, the threats did not produce a breakdown — mediators held firm and negotiators continued. But this episode illustrates the inherent fragility of a diplomatic approach that combines official negotiating channels with unpredictable presidential communications that can contradict or disrupt the work of diplomats. JD Vance, more pragmatic in style than his principal, appears to have played a crucial stabilizing role in these negotiations. His statement calling the return of inspectors a "major milestone" indicates a genuine preference for the deal over escalation.

Trump's 60 days

The choice of a 60-day deadline in the MOU is not incidental. Sixty days is roughly the time the American administration needs to prepare a military option if negotiations fail — or to consolidate an agreement if they succeed. It is also short enough to maintain pressure on Iran and long enough to permit serious negotiations. This deadline reflects the Trumpian dynamic: the threat as catalyst, the agreement as a victory to announce, speed as a mark of strength. But nuclear reality resists political deadlines. Twenty years of diplomacy demonstrate this.

What Trump — and Vance — want from these negotiations is a presentable diplomatic victory: Iran yielding on its nuclear capabilities, sanctions lifting, oil prices falling, regional conflict stabilizing. What Iran wants is maximum economic relief with minimum international control over its strategic capacities. These two agendas are not theoretically irreconcilable — but the distance between them remains considerable. The 60 days will measure how much of that distance can be covered.

Trump and his "violent threats" that nearly blow up the negotiations, then Vance who salvages things with pragmatism — this is American diplomacy in 2026: unpredictable, sometimes dangerous, occasionally effective. I do not like this method. But I must acknowledge that maximum pressure succeeded in bringing Iran back to a table it had walked away from after the strikes. This result might not have been obtained with a more orthodox approach. That is the necessary cost applied to foreign policy.

Israel facing the Bürgenstock deal: between relief and mistrust

Jerusalem observed the Bürgenstock negotiations with anxious attention. For Israel, a nuclear deal with Iran that does not fully dismantle Iranian enrichment capacities is potentially more dangerous than no deal at all — because it legitimizes a nuclear program while temporarily limiting its progression. Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed reservations similar to those his predecessor Ariel Sharon had about the Oslo negotiations regarding the JCPoA of 2015. Israel's structural mistrust of diplomatic agreements with Tehran is deeply rooted in the repeated declarations by Iranian leaders concerning the Jewish state.

The central question for the 60 days is whether Israel will continue to refrain from unilateral military action during the negotiating period. The Israeli strikes of spring 2026 on Iranian nuclear installations — which are precisely what made verification and control of Iranian uranium so complicated — took place despite American objections. If Washington cannot guarantee Israeli restraint during the negotiations, the entire diplomatic edifice of Bürgenstock could collapse from a single air strike. This is the fundamental vulnerability of this process.

Saudi Arabia between normalization and strategic calculation

Saudi Arabia plays a role in this Iranian nuclear file that is often underestimated. Riyadh has its own civilian nuclear ambitions — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stated that if Iran obtained the bomb, Saudi Arabia would seek to acquire one as well. This statement is not a bluff — it reflects a regional deterrence logic that Bürgenstock negotiators must integrate. An agreement that contains Iran at a level acceptable to Washington but insufficient for Riyadh could trigger a regional nuclear arms race.

In parallel, the process of Saudi-Israeli normalization — relaunched under American mediation following the Abraham Accords — is intimately linked to developments in the Iranian file. If a Bürgenstock agreement materializes in a form Riyadh judges insufficient, normalization with Israel could slow. If the agreement is seen as satisfying Saudi security interests, it could instead accelerate the rapprochement. Middle Eastern geopolitics is a system of complex interconnections in which every variable affects all the others simultaneously — a reality that media simplifications struggle to capture.

I look at the Middle East and I see the perfect definition of systemic complexity: every actor has its own interests, its own calculations, its own red lines, and they interconnect in ways that even the most experienced diplomats struggle to model. In this context, the Bürgenstock diplomacy — as imperfect as it may be — is a courageous attempt to create a negotiating space in a system that naturally tends toward conflict. I hope it succeeds, while knowing the probability of failure remains high. This realism is not cynicism — it is a form of respect for the genuine complexity of the world.

From the NPT to the JCPoA: lessons from a long history

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 remains the cornerstone of the international non-proliferation regime, despite its flaws. Since 1968, only four states have acquired nuclear weapons outside the framework of the five recognized nuclear powers — India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel (which neither confirms nor denies). The non-proliferation regime has its failures — but it also has its successes. Countries such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and even Ukraine — which inherited Soviet weapons after 1991 — renounced their nuclear capabilities within this framework. These successes are often forgotten when discussing the failures.

The 2015 JCPoA was, despite its imperfections, a rare example of a complex multilateral agreement that worked — for as long as it remained in force. The American withdrawal of 2018 under Trump, followed by Iran's withdrawal from its own commitments, demonstrated the fragility of an agreement that depends on political continuity in the signatory countries. The lesson for Bürgenstock is clear: a lasting agreement must be institutionalized in a way that makes it resistant to changes of government in signatory countries — which is precisely the most difficult thing to achieve in a democracy where treaties can be repudiated by the next administration.

North Korea as a counter-example: when diplomacy is not enough

To understand what awaits the negotiators of the 60 days, it is worth examining the North Korean file. Pyongyang signed agreements, accepted inspections, promised to halt its nuclear program — and still developed a bomb, then intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the American homeland. Iran has followed this trajectory with close attention. The IRGC — Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — has drawn specific lessons from the North Korean trajectory: a country that possesses nuclear weapons is not invaded. This fundamental strategic calculus will not disappear with a 60-day agreement.

The structural difference between Iran and North Korea is that Iran is an economic and energy power of an entirely different magnitude, deeply integrated into global commercial flows, with a middle class that aspires to international economic reintegration. Sanctions carry real costs for the Iranian economy — and that cost creates internal pressure for an agreement that would lift those restrictions. This is the fundamental lever that Western negotiators are using, and it is what distinguishes the Iranian file from the Korean one. But this lever has its limits — and the ideological lines of Iranian leaders have often prevailed over economic considerations.

The history of nuclear negotiations with Iran has taught me a form of epistemic caution: I do not know whether an agreement is possible, and I do not trust those who claim to know with certainty in either direction. What I do know is that the 60 days of Bürgenstock represent a real opportunity — perhaps the last before the situation definitively escapes diplomatic control. Using this opportunity with intelligence, without naivety or cynicism, while maintaining credible pressure and offering real incentives: that is the most difficult exercise in diplomacy. And these 60 days will be its full-scale test.

What "success" would truly mean

A comprehensive agreement in 60 days on the Iranian nuclear file would be a historic diplomatic achievement — comparable to, if not surpassing, the 2015 JCPOA. It would require: an agreement on the level of enrichment Iran will ultimately be permitted; a credible mechanism for managing and eliminating existing HEU stocks; an IAEA inspection regime intrusive enough to be credible; and at least a formula on ballistic missiles that satisfies Israel and the Gulf states. Each of these elements is itself a negotiating challenge. Achieving all of them in 60 days would require sincere and strong political will on both sides — a quantity that remains uncertain.

The most likely scenario, based on historical precedent, is a partial agreement — perhaps on inspections and stock management, with vague formulations on missiles and long-term enrichment levels. This would be less than a comprehensive agreement but more than a failure. It would be, to borrow the diplomatic terminology, a "framework agreement" with "mechanisms to be determined" — in other words, a JCPOA 2.0 with the same strengths and the same weaknesses. Better than nothing. Insufficient to be definitive. And exposed to the same risks of disintegration as its predecessor.

What failure would cost

If the 60 days pass without an agreement, the world returns to the situation of May 2026 — with oil potentially heading back toward $100 and beyond, military threats reactivated, Lebanon plunged into fresh escalation, and the IAEA without access to nuclear facilities whose contents remain unknown. This is a scenario neither Washington nor Tehran desires — but one that the internal political dynamics of each country can impose despite the preferences of negotiators. In Iran, the conservative forces opposed to any agreement with the United States are numerous and influential. In the United States, part of Congress will view any agreement with Tehran with structural suspicion.

The world needs these 60 days to produce something tangible — not perfect, just tangible. The price of energy, regional stability, nuclear non-proliferation, the prospects for peace in Lebanon: all of this hangs on the negotiating table that spent its first nights at Bürgenstock. Those doing this difficult work — the diplomats of Vance, of Araghchi, the unnamed mediators — deserve more recognition than the grand presidential declarations generally allow them. They are the ones holding the thread, at three in the morning in a Swiss hotel, when the alternatives are far worse.

I am fundamentally skeptical about the capacity of these 60 days to produce a complete and lasting agreement. Twenty years of Iranian nuclear history have carefully instilled that skepticism in me. But I am also fundamentally convinced that diplomacy — even imperfect, even partial, even fragile — is better than the alternative. Every day without war is a day won. Every incomplete agreement is a foundation on which to keep negotiating. Bürgenstock produced something. Let us hope the 60 days make something more of it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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