WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signaled his willingness to submit the recently negotiated US-Iran agreement to Congress for review, as lawmakers from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers demanded access to a deal whose full terms remain closely guarded.
Speaking during a meeting with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in France, Mr Trump suggested he had no objection to congressional scrutiny of the accord, which was announced over the weekend and is expected to formally be signed in Geneva on Sunday by Vice President JD Vance.
The agreement, signed electronically on Sunday by Mr Trump and Vice President JD Vance, is designed to end four months of military confrontation between Washington and Tehran and reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. But the administration has yet to release the text of the memorandum of understanding, leaving lawmakers uncertain about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, sanctions relief and verification mechanisms.
The secrecy surrounding the accord has triggered demands for greater transparency on Capitol Hill, where memories remain fresh of the bruising debate over the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by President Barack Obama.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said lawmakers lacked sufficient information to judge the agreement.
“I don’t know enough about it to say” whether it is a good deal, Mr Thune told reporters. “My understanding of what it entails — again, not having seen anything — I think the issues are going to be compliance and, ‘How you’re going to enforce that and what are the financial incentives the Iranians are going to have from our country?’”
Republicans broadly welcomed the apparent diplomatic breakthrough, but several made clear that support would depend on the final details.
Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Mr Trump’s closest allies in Congress, called for lawmakers to be given the opportunity to examine the agreement before endorsing it.
The unease among some Republicans has been reinforced by analyses suggesting that the war failed to achieve its original objective of fundamentally weakening the Iranian state.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argued that “the war’s initial aim — to deliver a death blow to the Islamic Republic —has proved unattainable”. Instead, they wrote, “rather than breaking Iran, the crucible of war has transformed it in unanticipated ways”.
Democrats, meanwhile, welcomed efforts to end the conflict but sharply criticised the administration’s decision to go to war in the first place.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urged the White House to provide a full briefing to Congress and questioned the overall wisdom of the military campaign.
Jack Reed, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the proposed agreement appeared to offer fewer restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme than the Obama-era accord that Mr Trump abandoned during his first term.
“So, we have spent billions of dollars. We’ve lost 14 personnel killed in action, hundreds wounded, and we’ve disrupted the world economy. And we’re getting basically less than what we had under the JCPOA, which President Trump walked away from,” Mr Reed told Fox News.
Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2026