Trump Requests Edits to Iran Deal

Our colleagues at Bloomberg Economics have done something very valuable. They've put together a breakdown comparing the original JCPoA to the president's initial demands to what is in this proposed memo of understanding. Christina, what is the reporting surrounding the nuclear capability starts

off with then? That's right. All right. We've put this up big on the board for our TV audience, but for our audio audience, I'm going to

take you through it. Okay. So during the JCPoA, what was agreed to is Iran said it would not pursue a nuclear weapon. It would retain low level enriched uranium.

That's for civilian purposes. And it's submit to IAEA monitoring. Now, there was debate about whether or not they were cheating on that. But I've talked to folks at IAEA that said any

visibility was valuable in order to keep tabs on what Iran was actually doing this time around. The US initially said it wanted to a complete dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program. Now, where we are with this MOU, as reported so

far, is Iran will agree not to pursue a nuclear weapon, enriching limits and monitoring and TBD not a lot of specifics there. And of course, we're still working through the deal, and we've heard different things from the white House and from

Iran. We've also got when it comes to existing uranium in 2015, and the JCPoA said it would access low enriched uranium, would be shipped out of Iran, or it would be blended down at about £25,000.

Of that did, in fact, leave the country. The initial U.S. demand at the start of this conflict was that all that uranium would be transferred or destroyed. Remember, the president said, it's all got to go.

They've got to hand it over. We've got to get rid of it. The current MOU, as reported, is Iran will agree to negotiate over what to do with that uranium. That's it.

That's where we're at. All right. So we've got the nuclear issue there. How about the issue of sanctions? There's been a lot of talk here about what's going

to happen with that going forward. And if the president gets his way here and the deal is kind of shaped in the image that he wants. Yeah.

So this has been really interesting too, because in the JCPoA, you remember the snapback sanctions. We were talking snapback sanctions. I feel like I heard that phrase one more time. So you had these nuclear sanctions.

They they were sanctions relief. It unlocked oil, banking and trade. 1.7 billion was the settlement number. The initial U.S. demands here were that Iran would get sanctions relief only

after concessions and no repeat of this cash to Iran that the president talked about on the trail. Especially now, the MOU, as we understand it, is the U.S. commits to discuss sanctions relief and discuss the release of

frozen assets. But nothing nothing concrete so far. Appreciate you walking us through that. Chris Kennedy put that breakdown together. He's Bloomberg Economics, his lead on economic statecraft.

He's also served in the National Security Council and both Presidents Biden and President Trump as its international economics director. Chris, what are the most glaring differences between the JCPoA and the proposed memo of understanding? I think we talk a lot here about, um, you