The deal also implies that Iran will soon be able to charge ships for passing through the Strait of Hormuz, effectively recognizing control of the strategic chokepoint that didn\u2019t exist before the war.<\/p>\n
By comparison, Obama\u2019s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action released about $50 billion in frozen Iranian assets, according to the\u00a0Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under a separate deal that coincided with the JCPOA, the U.S. delivered pallets stacked with\u00a0$400 million in Swiss francs and other currency<\/a>, a source of particular Republican outrage; the sum was transferred in cash due to sanctions that precluded a wire transfer.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s $300 billion package for Iran<\/a>\u00a0makes the JCPOA \u201clook like a pittance,\u201d said Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA in 2018, calling it \u201cone of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The MOU he signed June 17 in France establishes a framework to end the war he initiated four months earlier and to guide negotiations over Iran\u2019s nuclear program.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike the JCPOA, the MOU doesn\u2019t tie the funds to an agreement on nuclear enrichment or weapons development. Without such assurances, analysts and former officials said it\u2019s hard to see much in the deal other than unprecedented concessions by the U.S. \u2013 certainly not the \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d Trump promised to squeeze from Iran.<\/p>\n The JCPOA that Trump scrapped included concrete agreements on nuclear material and weapons, rules for monitoring and penalties for non-compliance.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot has been sacrificed up front just to get the Strait of Hormuz open again,\u201d said Daniel Schneiderman, who served in the State and Defense departments. He now directs global policy programs at the University of Pennsylvania Washington.<\/p>\n Wicker emphasized that he supported Trump\u2019s decision to attack Iran. But he condemned lifting sanctions and unfreezing assets, warning that Iran will use such funds to pursue its anti-American goals.<\/p>\n \u201cI am concerned that the memorandum of understanding negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the President\u2019s goals,\u201d he said in a June 18 statement.<\/p>\n Tolls in the Strait of Hormuz<\/p>\n Roughly 7.9% of global maritime trade flows through the Strait of Hormuz, including 20% of the world\u2019s supply of oil and natural gas.<\/p>\n In March, Iran declared the waterway closed, began attacking ships attempting to pass through it and laid mines. The moves made insurance for vessels transiting the strait prohibitively expensive.<\/p>\n Iran spent decades incorporating a strait blockage into its war planning. Western powers were also well aware of the likelihood. When Trump attacked, Iran tested the strategy for the first time.<\/p>\n Closing the strait sent global energy markets into a tailspin. By late March,\u00a0the average price per gallon of gas in the U.S.<\/a>\u00a0climbed from $3 to $4.56.<\/p>\n Although Trump\u00a0has asserted\u00a0<\/a>that the strait will remain toll-free, Iran has\u00a0already taken steps to implement fees<\/a>. One mechanism: mandatory insurance policies.<\/p>\n Before the ceasefire, Iran charged $2 million per tanker or $1 per barrel of oil for the few ships it allowed to pass. At pre-war shipping levels, that would top $7.7 billion a year in revenue.<\/p>\n Schneiderman called it \u201csignificant and extraordinary\u201d for Trump to grant Iran the right to charge tolls.\u00a0<\/p>\n The legality, however, is dubious. The strait is just 20 miles wide at its narrowest point but international law requires free passage in international waters.<\/p>\n Sanctions relief and economic development<\/p>\n One big target of criticism in the MOU is the $300 billion economic development plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump and aides say the U.S. will not contribute funding, but will organize it with regional partners that will contribute or catalyze private investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n That fund has no equivalent in the JCPOA.<\/p>\n The MOU adopts the JCPOA strategy of economic benefits in exchange for cooperation on elimination of nuclear weapons. But key provisions go far beyond the Obama deal\u2019s rewards.<\/p>\n Under the JCPOA, the U.S. rolled back most sanctions against Iran, including on its economy and oil exports. Sanctions related to terrorism, human rights abuses and arms remained in place.<\/p>\n In exchange, Iran agreed to restrict nuclear enrichment to levels sufficient only for civilian uses and to submit to international inspections.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s MOU, by contrast, calls for the U.S. to \u201cterminate all types of sanctions\u201d against Iran on a schedule to be negotiated later.<\/p>\n The U.S. agreed to immediately issue waivers to allow Iran to\u00a0export oil at market rate<\/a>\u00a0for 60 days \u2013 a boon\u00a0worth up to $3 billion by some estimates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Frozen assets<\/p>\n Tehran\u00a0says the West is holding<\/a>\u00a0$24 billion of its assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal<\/a>\u00a0reported June 19 that the U.S. and Qatar were working to unfreeze $6 billion of that initially \u2013 to be used only for food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has highlighted that Iran can only unlock the full benefits offered under the MOU if it meets certain conditions. Officials have described the approach as pay for performance.<\/p>\n \u201cFundamentally, that money is not going to be unfrozen unless we continue to see progress, and that will obviously be a big part of the negotiation in the days to come,\u201d Vice President JD Vance told reporters Monday in Switzerland after talks with Iranian negotiators.<\/p>\n The JCPOA also unfroze funds incrementally as Iran met certain targets. The deal was fully implemented in 2016 after the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had made the promised changes to its nuclear program.<\/p>\n Trump killed that deal, and Iran resumed its nuclear program. In 2019, Iran accelerated uranium enrichment. Two years later, it suspended implementation of its monitoring agreement with the IAEA. By 2025, it was rapidly increasing its supply of nuclear material.<\/p>\n The MOU provides economic incentives upfront, with no agreement on limits to Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a pretty lopsided deal,\u201d said Bob Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former State Department official who helped lead early JCPOA negotiations until 2013. \u201cThe benefits to Iran were spelled out pretty clearly \u2013 some immediate benefits and some eventual benefits \u2013 but the benefits to the United States were amorphous, put off until future negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n Bankrolling aid or terrorism?<\/p>\n At a campaign rally in September 2015 in Washington, Trump\u00a0condemned<\/a>\u00a0the JCPOA and called its negotiators \u201cvery, very stupid people.\u201d He cited an inflated figure of $150 billion that Iran stood to receive and argued that the unfrozen assets would be used to menace Israel and to pursue other anti-American aims.<\/p>\n \u201cThey rip us off, they take our money, they make us look like fools, and now they\u2019re back to being who they really are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then a Florida senator, warned at the time that the JCPOA would let Iran buy missiles and boost its terror affiliates.<\/p>\n \u201cFlush with cash and arms, Iran will have even more opportunity to expand its influence across the Middle East and threaten its neighbors,\u201d he\u00a0wrote in September 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rubio and Vance, then an Ohio senator, co-sponsored a bill in 2023 that stated \u201cfunds released to Iran for so-called humanitarian purposes cannot be reliably prevented from funding future terrorist attacks.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Trump, Vance and Rubio are now doing precisely what they argued against, critics say.<\/p>\n Vance said that unfrozen funds could only purchase American soy, corn and wheat for Iranian civilians. He called it \u201ca classic Trump deal.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Trump-Iran-Epic-Fury-1024x683.jpg\")
President Donald Trump oversees Operation Epic Fury at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 28, 2026. (White House photo by Daniel Torok)<\/p>\n