President Donald Trump did not appear willing to extend his current trip to Evian, France, for the G7 summit to attend the official signing of the memorandum of understanding with Iran on Friday in Geneva, Switzerland.
“Well, it depends,” Trump told reporters during a bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday. “JD is coming in for it. He was originally going to do it.”
Vice President JD Vance remained in Washington as Trump attended the G7 summit this week. Vance spent Monday morning defending the 60-day preliminary ceasefire extension on the morning network shows, while the president is expected to continue discussions on Iran and the Ukraine war in France.
“I’ll probably be gone by then,” Trump said about whether he could stay in Europe longer than expected. “We’re having dinner in a day and a half, right. We’re going to be staying quite late, so I may be involved, I may not, but JD was coming in for that specifically.”
A senior U.S. official confirmed that Trump and Vance signed the MOU, along with Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, in a call with reporters Monday morning.
Specific details of the MOU have not yet been released to the public, but Trump told reporters that the Strait of Hormuz “is already partially opened” and downplayed reports that Iran could secure billions of dollars released.
“The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “They fully agree to that with strong policing powers.”
The president also criticized former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, which restricted Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
“When I terminated that, it was very important,” Trump said of the JCPOA. “Because it was a road to a nuclear weapon. It was a horrible deal for the United States. It was a deal where billions of dollars was given to Iran. … $1.7 billion was taken out of the banks and given to Iran, and on top of that, tens of billions of dollars were spent.”
VANCE SAYS MOU BETWEEN IRAN AND US ‘ALREADY SIGNED’ DIGITALLY
Trump also said he was in favor of releasing the MOU plan, which comes as a senior U.S. official also said that the MOU will be released in the next 24 to 48 hours.
“I think pretty soon,” Trump said during the bilateral. “I want it to be released, because it’s a very powerful document. It’s not like the Obama document, which was just a terrible document.”