The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated Fars News boasted that Tehran secured favorable language changes to the draft Memorandum of Understanding with the United States before it went public.
The MOU has been the subject of an intense public relations battle from the U.S. and Iran, as both seek to sell the deal to domestic critics. Tehran, unsurprisingly, has sought to portray the deal as a clear defeat for the U.S., one that extracted major concessions while refusing to give up any of its own. To back up its case, on Monday, Fars News claimed that Iran secured concessions from the U.S. in a few last-minute changes to the deal.
The report claimed three major changes: the addition of the phrase, “guaranteeing sovereignty and respect for the territorial integrity of Lebanon” to the MOU, a reference to a joint Iran-Oman maritime administration in the Strait of Hormuz, and a pledge that the MOU would only bar the collection of tolls in the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days.
The MOU leaked to Bloomberg before it went public did not include these three amendments, but the final draft released to the public did.
Aside from Fars News, no other outlet has reported the development. Fars News is viewed by the U.S. as a central part of the Guard’s propaganda apparatus and is sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
The outlet is also infamous for its lack of credibility. Among its most notable controversies are articles claiming the U.S. has been run by a secret cabal of space aliens since 1945, an article claiming Iran invented a time machine, and an article from the satirical news site The Onion, posted almost verbatim as a real news story. It also pledged tens of thousands of dollars to the fatwa against author Salman Rushdie in 2016, joining the Iranian regime’s call for his murder.
Nevertheless, no matter how the changes to the MOU came about, each provision carries significant consequences.
The language about Lebanon aims to further constrain Israel in its war with Hezbollah, while the language about Iranian authority over the Strait of Hormuz boosts Tehran’s claim of sovereignty over the key waterway. The 60-day toll ban implies that Iran could reinstitute them after this period, which would be a massive revenue boost to its struggling economy. It would also cost the U.S.’s Gulf allies significantly.
During the war, Iran’s claims of assertion of sovereignty over the strait and the charging of tolls were widely mocked and not taken seriously as a lasting state of affairs, particularly due to its lack of basis in international law. The Gulf countries have been outspoken about their opposition to this practice.
“The situation must return to the status quo before the war, there is no other option from our perspective,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud said in a recent talk.
“The management of the strait was working fine before the conflict,” he continued. “There were no issues. Ships were navigating freely. There was no safety issue. There was no environmental issue. There were no issues.”
“So why should we now, as a result of a conflict, accept some novel arrangement that is going to be imposed on it? That, to me, doesn’t make sense,” the foreign minister concluded.
Trump was dismissive of the possibility of tolls, arguing at a press conference that Iran would not pursue them.
“The thing that’s going to stop them from [eventually charging tolls], because you can’t cover everything in a document, is common sense,” he said, adding that they were afraid the U.S. would start bombing them again if they tried.
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The MOU also includes language saying that the administration of the Strait of Hormuz must be “in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz,” according to the MOU.
A senior U.S. official speaking with CNBC News indicated that Washington was relying on the Gulf countries to strike a separate deal with Iran to prevent the imposition of any tolls.