We have a deal to end the war!

No, wait. Sorry. I jumped the gun. We have a provisional “memorandum of understanding pertaining to peace.”

If you’re wondering what the difference is — the difference between a deal and a MOU — just consult any of the trade frameworks Donald Trump announced in 2025 when, in an effort to placate irritable markets and pacify a long list of incredulous US trade partners, The White House resorted to a succession of non-binding executive summaries setting out unenforceable “terms” for bilateral commerce.

After weeks of equivocation defined by bombastic rhetoric from both sides and intermittent clashes between the US Navy and IRGC gunboats, Trump said late Saturday that an agreement with Iran “has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization.”

Details were initially sparse, but Trump’s announcement, delivered on TruthSocial, as usual, came four days after he claimed the Pentagon was “an hour” away from launching new attacks on Iran, before regional leaders intervened, insisting the IRGC was earnestly engaged in the diplomatic process.

Trump said the agreement came together after consultations with the heads of the Gulf monarchies, Egyptian strongman Fattah El-Sisi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who, as a quick aside, took another step towards extending his iron-fisted rule last week, when a beholden Turkish court replaced the leaders of the country’s main opposition party) and Asim Munir, Pakistan’s de facto dictator.

Reading between the lines of competing descriptions, the arrangement would end open hostilities between all belligerents, including the IDF and Hezbollah, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, toll-free, lift the American blockade of Iranian ports and unfreeze tens of billions in Iranian assets in a phased process contingent on subsequent negotiations around the fate of the country’s nuclear program, which’ll take place over the next two months. It sounds like those assets will be considered reparations (“reconstruction funds”) for the purposes of the arrangement.

Iranian state media said Thursday that Mojtaba Khamenei decreed Iran’s enriched uranium not be moved out of the country, but Trump, as well as US officials commenting both on and off the record, continue to insist Tehran will ultimately cede its store of near-bomb-grade uranium. The question is what “cede” entails.

Iran’s expressed some willingness to dilute at least a portion of the material under IAEA supervision, but Benjamin Netanyahu says it must be physically removed — by any means.

Speaking of Netanyahu, Trump talked to him over the weekend too. The call “went very well,” he claimed. According to a heavily-sourced article in the Times, Netanyahu was “thoroughly sidelined” by Trump in recent weeks.

As The White House pursued a settlement with Tehran, the Israeli leadership was “cut almost entirely out of the loop; forced to pick up what they can about the back-and-forth through their connections with leaders and diplomats in the region as well as their own surveillance from inside the Iranian regime,” the Times said.

Israel was still bombing Lebanon on Friday and into Saturday. Half a dozen paramedics in the country were killed in IDF airstrikes over just 24 hours last week, according to local officials.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Abbas Araghchi’s foreign affairs ministry appeared to confirm that Trump and Iran are in fact in the home stretch on agreeing to a framework for ending hostilities, setting the stage for nuclear negotiations and, ultimately, “a mutually acceptable solution.”