TESTIMONY: The US-Iran Accord — A Giant Bandage on a Wound That Has Not Healed

TESTIMONY: The US-Iran Accord — A Giant Bandage on a Wound That Has Not Healed

Introduction: 60 days to resolve what 20 years could not

A memorandum of understanding that sidesteps every real question

On June 15, 2026, a memorandum of understanding was announced between the United States and Iran, establishing a 60-day pause in hostilities following the American-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. The agreement was signed by representatives of both countries and has been described in the international press as a "welcome respite." But as analyst Neil Quilliam put it with rare candor in this kind of context: "It is simply a big bandage — and a future conflict is likely to arise at some point." That formulation deserves to be inscribed over the entrance to every press conference announcing this accord. Because in a single sentence it says what hours of diplomacy sought to paper over: the problem has not been solved. It has merely been deferred.

During these 60 days, both parties commit to seeking to resolve some of the most contentious questions: Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, Tehran's nuclear agenda, sanctions, and the release of billions in frozen Iranian assets. These four files have been at the heart of negotiations since 2003. None of them was resolved in these 60 days. Few analysts believe a full resolution is realistic in such a short window — and even if it were, conflict and instability "could well return at some point." That is not defeatism. That is clarity.

What the accord says without saying it

The agreement offers "little more than a commitment by both parties to continue discussions." In diplomatic terms, that is the definition of an accord that settles nothing but allows both sides to pretend they have made progress. For Washington, it is a communications victory — the Trump administration can announce it ended a war it helped start. For Tehran, it is a reprieve to limit further damage to its nuclear capabilities and extract economic concessions. But the fundamental questions — can Iran be trusted on the nuclear file? What are its real intentions? — remain entirely open.

I was not present at these negotiations. I do not know the details of the back-channel talks. But what open sources reveal is clear enough for honest analysis: the unresolved questions are precisely those that have prevented any durable agreement for two decades.

The enriched uranium stockpile — the question that cannot be ignored

Where Iran stands on enrichment after the strikes

One of the official justifications for the American-Israeli strikes of June 2026 was the rapid progression of Iran's nuclear program, with enrichment levels that had reached 60 percent — well beyond the 3.67 percent permitted under the 2015 JCPOA — and indications that work was continuing toward weapons-grade levels. The strikes targeted several key nuclear facilities. Expert assessment of the actual damage inflicted on the Iranian program is contested: some estimate that enrichment capabilities were significantly reduced; others that they could be partially reconstituted within months.

Within the 60 days, Iran is supposed to negotiate on its enriched uranium stockpile. This raises several questions: how much remains after the strikes? At what enrichment level? Will it be transferred, diluted, or destroyed? Who will verify? These questions are not addressed in the public text of the agreement. That ambiguity is not incidental — it is precisely on these points that past negotiations have collapsed, notably because Iran has always resisted full, unannounced inspections of its facilities.

The specter of the JCPOA — the accord that almost worked

It is impossible to understand the current situation without returning to the history of the JCPOA. That 2015 agreement, negotiated over 18 months between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany), traded verifiable limitations on Iran's nuclear program for partial sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets. It included IAEA verification mechanisms, timetables for centrifuge dismantlement, and a drastic reduction of the enriched uranium stockpile.

In 2018, Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, arguing it was insufficient and did not cover Iranian ballistic missiles or Iran's support for regional movements like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Iran gradually abandoned its nuclear commitments. The outcome of that disengagement cycle, five years later, was war. And now a 60-day memorandum of understanding.

Ballistic missiles — the absentee from the negotiating table

The glaring gap that everyone sees and no one names

The current accord, as several analysts quoted by The Guardian have noted, "does not address" Iran's ballistic missile capabilities. This is not a detail — it may be the most urgent question from a regional security standpoint. Iran possesses the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. These missiles have sufficient range to reach Israel, Saudi Arabia, American bases across the region, and some European Union members. They could theoretically be adapted to carry nuclear warheads — which is precisely why American neo-conservatives have insisted on their inclusion in any nuclear negotiation.

Iran has always refused to negotiate its ballistic capabilities, treating them as matters of national sovereignty and defense against regional adversaries. The Iranian logic is internally consistent: without conventional ballistic deterrence, Iran is vulnerable to strikes by its neighbors and their allies. That does not make it any less dangerous for regional security.

Iranian support for the Axis of Resistance — the other absence

The accord also does not address Iran's financial and military support for what Tehran calls the Axis of Resistance — the network of armed groups including Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria, and Hamas. These groups have been central to the regional conflicts of the past decade. For many analysts, they represent the primary source of regional instability — not Iran's nuclear program per se, but the power Iran projects through these intermediaries.

Excluding this dimension from the negotiations means that even a perfect nuclear accord would not resolve the deep sources of regional instability. Iran could theoretically suspend its nuclear program while continuing to fund and arm its regional proxies — which would continue fueling conflicts in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and beyond.

Sanctions and frozen assets — the economic lever

Billions blocked as bargaining chips

The 60-day accord includes among its negotiating subjects the question of the release of billions in frozen Iranian assets. These assets — estimated between $100 and $150 billion depending on the source, though practically accessible amounts are considerably lower — have been blocked by American and international sanctions. Their partial release was a central component of the 2015 JCPOA. Under the Biden administration, negotiations had led to partial releases in certain specific contexts — notably limited transfers to accounts under humanitarian-use conditions.

The question of these assets is politically explosive in the United States: part of American public opinion and Congress opposes any return of funds to Iran, arguing the money would be used to finance terrorism and regional proxies. The reality is more nuanced — states' economies depend on their resources for multiple purposes, and blocking all Iranian assets also has effects on the Iranian civilian population. But this nuance is politically difficult to convey in a post-war context.

Sanctions — the West's primary pressure lever

The sanctions regime against Iran is one of the most elaborate in the world. It covers oil, gas, financial services, technology exports, and many industrial sectors. Its effectiveness is real but partial: Iran has developed evasion mechanisms over decades — oil sales through intermediaries, reliance on China and Russia as alternative commercial partners, development of an informal sector resilient to sanctions.

In the context of the 60-day negotiations, the United States holds the sanctions lever as its primary pressure tool. But its long-term effectiveness depends on the consistency of American commitment — if Iran perceives that sanctions could again be lifted then reimposed according to shifts in administrations in Washington, their deterrent power diminishes. American credibility on Iranian nuclear sanctions has been damaged by the back-and-forth over the JCPOA.

Verification — the challenge that has sunk every previous accord

Without credible verification, an accord is worthless

The central question in any nuclear negotiation is verification: how do you ensure that Iran honors its commitments? The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the designated body for this mission. Its inspectors have access to Iran's declared facilities — but persistent concerns exist about undeclared activities at hidden sites. In 2021, the IAEA found traces of nuclear materials at undeclared Iranian facilities, fueling doubts about Iranian transparency.

For a future accord to be durable, it will need to include a more robust verification regime than the JCPOA — with unannounced access, continuous electronic monitoring of key sites, and automatic trigger mechanisms in case of violation. Iran has resisted these levels of control, describing them as violations of its sovereignty. This fundamental disagreement over verification is one of the structural obstacles to any durable nuclear accord.

The state of facilities after the strikes

An important element of this negotiation's context is that the American-Israeli strikes physically damaged several Iranian nuclear facilities. This changes the verification dynamic: there are now fewer nuclear capabilities to monitor, but also more potentially contaminated zones whose inspection is complicated by structural damage. The IAEA will need access to these sites to evaluate the real post-strike state of the nuclear program — requiring Iranian cooperation that Tehran could use as a negotiating lever.

I acknowledge not knowing with precision the current state of Iranian nuclear facilities after the strikes. This information is partly classified, partly contested between American, Israeli, and Iranian intelligence services. What I can say is that an honest evaluation of this situation is a prerequisite to any credible negotiation — and that overly optimistic assessments of the damage inflicted on the Iranian program by the strikes could produce an accord that underestimates what remains to be controlled.

The 60-day window — an unrealistic timeline

Why experts do not believe in a complete resolution

The memorandum provides 60 days to resolve outstanding questions. Analysts cited by The Guardian express their skepticism: "few analysts believe a final settlement can be reached in 60 days." To put this timeline in perspective: the 2015 JCPOA required 18 months of intense negotiations. New START negotiations between the United States and Russia took several years. The Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians, negotiated in secret for years, never produced a definitive peace.

60 days is enough to produce an agreement in principle. It is not enough to build trust, resolve technical disagreements over verification, obtain the necessary political ratifications in both capitals, and address the broader regional questions that both parties have every interest in excluding from an already difficult negotiation. The risk is that the final accord after 60 days will be as insubstantial as the memorandum that preceded it — meaning an agreement to keep negotiating.

What happens when the 60 days expire?

The memorandum does not detail the consequences of the 60-day window expiring without a substantive agreement. Several scenarios are possible: a mutual extension of the memorandum, a return to hostilities, direct negotiation once again. The probability of an immediate return to war after 60 days without an accord is generally considered low — both parties have reasons to prefer an extension over an immediate return to confrontation. But a succession of extensions without substantive progress ultimately erodes the process's credibility.

Iran, for its part, has long experience in nuclear negotiations: it knows how to use time to its advantage, accumulating partial gains on sanctions while deferring concessions on the nuclear program. If this pattern repeats itself in the 60 days, the accord will not be a settlement — it will be the beginning of a new cycle of interminable negotiations.

The regional dimension — Israel and Saudi Arabia in the equation

Israel — the factor that changes everything

Israel is not formally a party to the current negotiations, but its role in shaping this crisis is central: it was an American-Israeli strike that triggered the sequence leading to this memorandum. Israeli policy on Iranian nuclear weapons has been simple and explicit for decades: Israel cannot accept a nuclear Iran. This position has driven several covert operations against Iran's nuclear program — sabotage, assassination of scientists, cyberattacks (Stuxnet), and now direct strikes.

For Israel, any accord that does not irreversibly prevent Iran from building a bomb is insufficient. This position is understandable from its perspective — but it sets a bar that the United States may not be able to reach in a negotiation with Iran. The possible divergence between American minimum conditions and Israeli minimum conditions for an acceptable accord creates a fracture risk in the allied coalition that conducted the strikes.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies

The Gulf monarchies — and particularly Saudi Arabia — are watching these negotiations with particular anxiety. They share with Israel the concern about a nuclear Iran. But they also have economic interests pushing toward regional normalization: lasting stability in the Persian Gulf is the condition for maintaining oil flows and international investment. Saudi Arabia, which had begun normalization discussions with Iran in 2023 under Chinese mediation, was destabilized by the war and is waiting to see if the current negotiations produce anything durable.

China, which had facilitated the Saudi-Iranian reconciliation in 2023, is notably absent from the context of these negotiations. Beijing has an obvious interest in regional stability — that is where a significant share of its oil imports originates. Its silence in this phase of the crisis may be calculated: letting the United States manage the consequences of a war it helped trigger, while remaining available as an alternative mediator if the American-Iranian negotiations fail.

Russia, North Korea, and technology transfers — the underestimated factor

What Iran can still receive

One of the least-discussed angles in post-strike analyses of Iran's nuclear situation is that of technology transfers from Russia and North Korea. Both countries have interests in seeing Iran maintain a nuclear deterrence capability — Iran is a strategic partner and a potential consumer of military and nuclear technologies that Moscow and Pyongyang wish to leverage. If international sanctions against Russia and North Korea are insufficiently enforced, the reconstruction of Iran's nuclear program could be accelerated by technology transfers that American-Iranian negotiations cannot control.

This dimension is particularly important in the current context, where relations between Russia, North Korea, and Iran have deepened since 2022. The Ukrainian war accelerated military cooperation among these actors — North Korean munitions for Russia, Iranian drones for Russia, Russian expertise for Iran and North Korea. Ignoring this dimension in nuclear negotiations means overlooking the system of which Iran is a part.

The global proliferation axis and its implications

The Iranian nuclear question is not a bilateral USA-Iran question. It sits within a context of global nuclear proliferation where non-proliferation regimes are under unprecedented pressure. North Korea is a de facto nuclear power. Iran is close to that capability. Saudi Arabia has declared it would seek nuclear capabilities if Iran acquires them. Several other regional countries have expressed similar interest.

In this context, a nuclear accord with Iran that does not durably resolve the question is not only insufficient for regional security — it establishes a precedent that weakens the entire global non-proliferation regime. If a state can advance its nuclear program to the threshold, absorb military strikes, and still obtain an agreement that preserves a residual capability, what is the deterrent value of the non-proliferation regime for other countries in other regions?

The Iranian population — the ingredient missing from the negotiation

What ordinary Iranians are living through

All of these geopolitical analyses risk forgetting an essential actor: the 90 million Iranians living under the consequences of this crisis. Sanctions have had a real and painful economic impact on the Iranian civilian population: chronic inflation, severe monetary devaluation, difficulty accessing medicines and medical equipment, high youth unemployment. The military strikes added the dimension of physical destruction and security uncertainty.

The Iranian population is not monolithic in its support for the nuclear program. Surveys — with all the caveats they entail in an authoritarian context — have suggested that many Iranians would prefer economic normalization to nuclear confrontation. But their voice is largely absent from negotiations conducted between governments that primarily represent themselves. A durable accord will eventually need to integrate the reality that Iranian politics could evolve under pressure from an exhausted population — or that a government feeling existentially threatened might conversely radicalize to maintain its nationalist legitimacy.

The Iranian regime — the enemy of its people or their defender?

The distinction between the Iranian regime and the Iranian population is important but often erased in political rhetoric. Sanctions that strangle the Iranian economy hit the civilian population disproportionately — regime leaders have evasion mechanisms and economic networks that allow them to absorb shocks far better than ordinary citizens. This reality is morally and strategically problematic: the population is being punished for the choices of a regime it did not freely elect and that many openly contest.

But the alternative — lifting sanctions without obtaining nuclear concessions — would send the signal that nuclear blackmail works, encouraging other states to follow this path. This is one of the most difficult dilemmas of sanctions policy: its humanitarian effects on civilian populations are real and documented, but the alternatives are even less acceptable from a non-proliferation standpoint.

The accord that could work — and its impossible conditions

What a truly durable accord would look like

A truly durable agreement between the United States and Iran on the nuclear file would require at minimum five elements that the current memorandum does not contain and that 60 days will not be enough to produce. First, an unprecedented verification mechanism — unannounced inspections, continuous monitoring, and automatic consequences in case of violation. Second, a verifiable limitation of enrichment to levels compatible with civilian use. Third, an agreement on ballistic missiles — or at minimum a transparency mechanism that reduces risks. Fourth, a roadmap for progressive sanctions relief tied to verifiable steps, not to discretionary decisions by the American executive. And fifth, some form of engagement on Iranian regional policy.

These five elements together represent a diplomatic ambition that the international community has never managed to achieve with Iran despite decades of attempts. The 60-day memorandum is supposed to prepare the ground for reaching them. The precedents are not encouraging. But precedents do not determine the future — they inform it.

The role of European allies

Europe played a central role in negotiating the 2015 JCPOA and sought to preserve it after the American withdrawal in 2018, with limited success. In the current context, European allies could be important actors in a more robust accord architecture: their credibility as guarantors is more durable than that of an American administration subject to electoral cycle shifts, and their collective economic weight is significant enough that European commitments on sanctions carry real value for Iran. The question is whether this consultation will occur and whether the United States under Trump is prepared to share the design and conduct of an accord that will necessarily involve some form of multilateralism.

This is where the Trump factor remains a major unknown: his administration prefers bilateral agreements to multilateral architectures. If the United States negotiates alone an accord with Iran without involving its allies in its design, that accord will be more vulnerable to administration changes and less legitimate in the eyes of the regional actors whose cooperation will be needed for its implementation.

What the war has changed — and what it has not

The permanent impact of the strikes on the crisis dynamic

The American-Israeli strikes of June 2026 changed several elements of the Iranian nuclear crisis dynamic. They demonstrated that the United States and Israel are capable of and willing to use military force to prevent an Iranian nuclear capability. This demonstration has real deterrent value — but it also reinforced the Iranian conviction that a nuclear capability is the ultimate guarantee against future aggression. This is the paradox of preventive strikes on nuclear programs: they can delay but rarely eliminate the motivation that generated them.

What they have not changed: the political will of the Iranian regime to maintain enrichment capability, its fundamental distrust of American guarantees following the abandonment of the JCPOA, and the regional geopolitics in which Iran perceives itself as a power besieged by adversaries benefiting from American and Israeli support. As long as these perceptions and deep motivations are not addressed, technical agreements will remain fragile.

The uncertain future of a good-faith accord

It would be unfair to conclude that this accord can lead nowhere. Diplomacy has produced results in seemingly intractable situations. Direct contact between the parties, even within a limited memorandum, can create unpredictable dynamics. Political personalities on both sides could find interest in building something more durable. The exhaustion of the Iranian population under sanctions and conflict could create pressure on the regime for more substantial concessions.

But the probability remains that the 60 days will produce a framework accord more formal than the memorandum, followed by months or years of interminable technical negotiations, with the permanent risk of collapse if either party judges that the balance of power has shifted in its favor. This is the historical pattern of Iranian-American nuclear negotiations. And the June 2026 memorandum, welcome as it is in the immediate term, contains nothing in its structure to suggest it will break that pattern.

The implications for Ukraine — a dangerous distraction

International attention as a scarce resource

While the Iranian crisis dominated international headlines since the June 2026 strikes, the war in Ukraine continued. The Russians did not pause. Missiles and drones continued to fall on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure. But the attentional bandwidth of media, diplomats, and policymakers is finite. When a Middle Eastern crisis occupies all the available space, it mechanically reduces the space for the Ukrainian, Taiwanese, and North Korean crises.

Russia noted with interest that the Évian G7, dominated by the Iranian crisis, devoted less attention and fewer concrete decisions to Ukraine than previous summits. Zelensky himself mentioned in his open letter to Putin that "the United States, focused on its war against Iran, is not paying attention to the war in Europe." This is precisely the strategic dispersion effect that Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea collectively benefit from producing.

The interdependence of crises as a democratic vulnerability

One of the structural weaknesses of democracies in contemporary geopolitical competition is precisely this difficulty in simultaneously managing multiple high-intensity crises without one negatively affecting the others. Authoritarian regimes do not face this problem to the same degree: they concentrate decisions in a small number of power centers and maintain long-term strategic directions independently of electoral cycles and media attention.

The US-Iran accord is potentially positive — one war fewer. But its diplomatic management should not come at the expense of the coherence of support for Ukraine or vigilance against Chinese ambitions. This is not a choice between these files — it is an imperative of institutional capacity to manage them in parallel with equal rigor.

The post-60-day period — preparing for disillusionment

The likely scenario: extension without resolution

The most likely scenario for the end of the 60 days is neither a historic accord nor a return to war. It is an extension of the memorandum, accompanied by an agreement on several technical points to allow both parties to present a result without resolving the fundamental questions. This scenario is consistent with the history of Iranian-American nuclear negotiations: partial progress sufficient to justify continuing discussions, but insufficient to produce lasting stability.

In this scenario, Iran will have bought time to assess the damage to its facilities, attempt to reconstitute what can be reconstituted, and negotiate sanctions relief. The United States will have presented the accord as a diplomatic victory. And in two or three years, the cycle will resume: incident, escalation, strikes, accord, extension, escalation. Unless something fundamentally different is built in these 60 days.

What Ukraine teaches about incomplete accords

There is a cruel precedent for this type of scenario: the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015, negotiated to end the fighting in the Donbas. Those agreements produced a partial cessation of hostilities — which lasted until Russia decided it no longer had interest in honoring them. The lesson is not that imperfect accords are useless — they can buy time, reduce immediate losses. The lesson is that imperfect accords that leave fundamental questions unresolved ultimately collapse as soon as the balance of power shifts.

This is the reality American and Iranian negotiators will face in these 60 days. Either they produce something structurally different from previous agreements — which demands political courage and concessions from both sides. Or they produce a convenience agreement that defers the next crisis to an indeterminate date. The whole world is watching to see which of these scenarios materializes.

What the West must demand — and what it cannot accept

The red lines that must not be crossed

In the context of these negotiations, Western democracies have red lines that must not be ceded under pressure. First: no substantive sanctions relief without verifiable progress on enrichment and the uranium stockpile. Second: the IAEA must have full, unrestricted access to Iranian nuclear facilities, including those not previously declared. Third: any accord must be multilateral and involve European allies — not merely a bilateral American-Iranian deal that can be torn up by the next president. These red lines are not negotiating positions. They are minimum conditions for an accord to have any chance of durability.

What the West cannot accept: an accord that preserves enrichment capability above 5 percent without a verifiable limitation mechanism, or an accord that normalizes Iran's economic situation without concrete nuclear steps. These compromises appear attractive in the short term — they reduce immediate tensions. But they signal to other countries worldwide that the strategy of enrich-to-the-threshold-then-negotiate is a winning one. That is the most dangerous precedent these negotiations could establish.

What Iran must decide for itself

The equation is not unilateral. Iran must also make choices that cannot be imposed from outside. It must decide whether it wants to be reintegrated into the global economy, with the considerable benefits that would represent for its population — or whether it prefers to maintain its nuclear deterrence strategy that isolates it economically but protects it militarily. This choice belongs to the Iranians — and ultimately to their government.

The West can create conditions that make this choice more or less attractive in one direction or the other. It cannot make that choice for Iran. And that is why any honest analysis of this 60-day memorandum must acknowledge that its success depends in part on an Iranian political decision over which the United States and its allies have real but limited influence. Incentives can be offered. Will cannot be forced.

Conclusion: peace is a destination, not a communiqué

What the cessation of hostilities actually means

The US-Iran memorandum of understanding of June 2026 is a cessation of hostilities — it is not peace. The difference is fundamental. A cessation of hostilities stops the fighting without resolving the causes that produced it. Peace requires a durable resolution of fundamental disputes, built on mutual trust and robust verification mechanisms. For Iran and the United States, we are very far from that.

What has been achieved — the silence of the guns, the end of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the decline in oil prices that deprives Russia of war revenues — has real value. It is not nothing. But calling it an "accord" or "peace" without associating it with analytical clarity about what remains unresolved is a favor to those who prefer appealing narratives to uncomfortable realities.

The imperative of clarity

The unresolved questions — enriched uranium, ballistic missiles, regional proxies, verification, sanctions — are precisely those that have made every previous agreement fragile. The June 2026 memorandum has not found a new answer to these questions. It has bought time. That time can be used to build something durable — or it can be wasted in negotiations that reproduce the same deadlocks. The difference will depend on the political will of both parties, the consistency of American engagement, and the ability of the international community to maintain coordinated pressure on unresolved questions rather than satisfying itself with the appearance of an accord.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Sources and limitations

This article relies primarily on the The Guardian article of June 15, 2026 by Jason Burke, titled "US-Iran ceasefire offers welcome respite but true peace looks distant as ever." Direct quotations — including those from analyst Neil Quilliam and the analysis of unresolved questions — come from that article. I supplemented with contextual information on the JCPOA, sanctions policy, and regional dynamics that are part of the established public domain. I do not have access to the full texts of the negotiations or classified documents.

I acknowledge that my skepticism about this accord's durability reflects an analytical position that could be refuted if the 60 days produce an agreement substantially different from what precedents suggest. I hope to be wrong. But I cannot write what I do not analytically believe to be founded.

Declared biases

I am skeptical of diplomatic accords that sidestep fundamental questions. I support a robust verification approach in any nuclear accord with Iran. I uphold Israel's right to security while acknowledging that preventive strikes create complex proliferation dynamics. I am concerned by the distraction the Iranian crisis represents for support to Ukraine.

Sources

Primary sources

The Guardian — US-Iran ceasefire offers welcome respite but true peace looks distant as ever, Jason Burke — June 15, 2026

Axios — Analysis of the US-Iran crisis and its implications for the Middle East — June 2026

Secondary sources

Foreign Policy — Historical context of Iranian-American nuclear negotiations — June 2026

Al Jazeera — Coverage of the Iran-USA crisis and its regional implications — June 2026

Kyiv Independent — Impact of the Iranian crisis on Western support for Ukraine — June 2026

Euromaidanpress — Ukraine-Russia peace talks deadlock in the context of the Iranian crisis — June 2026