US, Iran envoys head to Switzerland as Lebanon remain key test for deal

A member of Iran’s parliament’s presiding board described the memorandum with Washington as a US defeat and said Tehran’s hand remains “on the trigger” even in peacetime.

Farshad Ebrahimpour told the semi-official ISNA news agency on Saturday that Iran had “never tied its security to political agreements.”

He said the memorandum between Tehran and Washington showed what he called the failure of the United States.

Ebrahimpour’s remarks add to a growing line of warnings from Iranian officials and hardline voices who have framed the memorandum not as a step away from confrontation, but as a pause.

The US-Iran memorandum could restore a major source of revenue for Tehran by allowing it to resume oil and fuel sales, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The report said Iran could earn more than $60 billion a year from oil sales based on its prewar production levels and current prices.

Several oil-laden Iranian tankers have already left port and crossed the US naval blockade line this week, the report said, describing the movement as an early sign of anticipated exports.

A state-linked religious singer in Shahr-e Rey threatened President Masoud Pezeshkian with death if the conditions set by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei over the US memorandum are not fulfilled.

The threat came a day after Khamenei said he had held a different view on the agreement with Washington but authorized its implementation after Pezeshkian accepted responsibility for it.

“Mr. President, if the Leader’s conditions are not fulfilled, then it will be us, the blade and your throat,” the religious singer said.

In Iran, such performers, known as maddahs, are religious singers and reciters who lead mourning chants in Shiite ceremonies, but some have also become influential political voices aligned with hardline and security-linked networks.

Kamyar Behrang, a member of Iran International’s editorial team, said these figures are “not merely elegy reciters,” but part of the Islamic Republic’s security and repression apparatus, with links to institutions such as the Revolutionary Guards.

Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and a former IRGC commander, warned that any final text for a US-Iran agreement must be technically and legally precise, saying Tehran should guard against wording that Washington could later interpret narrowly.

Rezaei said the language on sanctions relief must be carefully drafted and that any provision on lifting the blockade should be stated explicitly.

He pointed to a possible loophole in one of the 14 points of the memorandum, saying Iran had demanded that US forces withdraw from areas around Iran within 30 days of a final agreement.

“But they may say that ‘around you’ means the 12 nautical miles of your coastal waters,” Rezaei said, adding that such an interpretation would be unacceptable to Tehran.

The long-running conservative Ettelaat newspaper said the memorandum between Tehran and Washington had helped prevent a wider war but offered no guarantee of long-term stability.

The newspaper said that after the formal signing of the memorandum, the central question was whether it could survive and whether Donald Trump’s United States could be trusted to continue the path toward a final agreement.

She said the memorandum had postponed key issues to the future, with both sides choosing first to prevent the crisis from escalating before entering more complex bargaining.

The article argued that the memorandum contained many positive points for Iran and said Trump’s comments on the sidelines of the G7 summit about Iran’s frozen assets and the continuation of its nuclear program were unexpectedly positive.

But it said the memorandum was “more the beginning of a new phase of managed rivalry” than the end of a crisis, adding that the memorandum had no guarantee of long-term durability and functioned more as a tool to prevent a wider war and control energy markets.

She also argued that Trump, who wanted a quick victory, was forced to shift his position once it became clear Iran would not surrender.

The article described the signing of the memorandum without taking Benjamin Netanyahu’s concerns into account as his biggest security defeat since the October 7, 2023 attack.

The United States and Qatar are working on a plan that could give Iran access to billions of dollars in frozen funds for humanitarian spending, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The plan, which has not been finalized, would initially allow Tehran to use $6 billion held in Qatar to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods, the report said.

The funds are part of Iran’s estimated $100 billion in cash frozen worldwide, much of it revenue from oil sales locked up overseas under sanctions, according to the Journal.

Under the proposed mechanism, Iran’s central bank would be able to order humanitarian goods using the previously frozen funds, with transfers carried out under international supervision.

The Journal said the plan remains in its early stages and has not yet been agreed to by Tehran.

The proposal would mark another early financial incentive under the recently signed US-Iran memorandum, while stopping short of giving Tehran unrestricted access to the money.

A Tehran lawmaker said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had expected more from the 14-point memorandum with Washington, adding to pressure on Iran’s negotiating team not to show flexibility in the next phase of talks.

Esmail Kowsari, a member of parliament from Tehran, told Khaneh Mellat, parliament’s news agency, that Khamenei’s message showed he believed more issues could have been included in the framework.

He said Khamenei had nevertheless agreed that the negotiating team should continue the talks under the current conditions, but warned that Iran must not retreat before what he called the enemy.

Kowsari said negotiators should remember that the United States proposed a ceasefire and talks from a “very fragile” position and needed the process.

“In the continuation of the negotiations, they must act in a way that America never feels the Islamic Republic of Iran needs negotiations with US,” he said.

Kowsari said Iran remained the real winner of the confrontation and was still negotiating from a position of power.

Hardline daily Kayhan criticized the memorandum between Tehran and Washington, warning that the deal may weaken Tehran’s two core levers: Hormuz and the nuclear file.

The newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is appointed as the Supreme Leader’s representative, said Mojtaba Khamenei’s message suggested government officials had a degree of confidence that the United States would meet its commitments, arguing that this optimism helped accelerate the process.

Kayhan also questioned why the Strait of Hormuz had been included in the negotiations, saying the waterway concerns what it described as the shared rights of Iran and Oman, and that the United States had no standing in the matter.

It also said nuclear talks with Washington, and their inclusion in the memorandum, lacked a defensible logic.

Former US special envoy for Iran Rob Malley said the US-Iran memorandum is “brimming with ambiguity” and warned that the most dangerous dispute centers on Lebanon, where Israel and Tehran read the agreement in sharply different ways.

In an interview with PBS NewsHour, Malley said Israel believes it should retain freedom of military action and does not intend to withdraw from southern Lebanon, while Iran sees the deal as requiring a comprehensive ceasefire, respect for Lebanese sovereignty and an end to Israeli presence there.

“The US doesn’t really seem to know what it wants, other than to scramble repeatedly to salvage the deal,” Malley said, describing Lebanon as “the most delicate piece of the deal at this point.”

He said the ceasefire’s survival would depend on whether Washington puts enough pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, whether Netanyahu is prepared to pay the political cost of an imposed ceasefire, and whether Iran is willing to overlook limited violations.

Malley said Persian Gulf states are more relieved by the end of the war than enthusiastic about the memorandum itself. “They are quite skeptical that this deal is going to come to fruition in terms of the greater, broader deal that’s supposed to occur in 60 days,” he said.

He argued that criticism should focus on the war rather than the memorandum needed to end it, saying the deal at least achieved two goals: ending the war and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Malley said it was “virtually impossible” for Washington and Tehran to resolve all nuclear and sanctions disputes within 60 days, predicting the sides may instead seek an extension or limited agreements. He warned that a breakdown could lead to renewed war and another closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US envoy Steve Witkoff were both expected in Switzerland for talks, Axios reported, after a ceasefire in Lebanon eased one of the main obstacles to the next phase of US-Iran negotiations.

Witkoff was expected to join Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who was already in Switzerland, while Araghchi planned to travel there on Saturday, according to the report.

The Swiss foreign ministry had said earlier that planned talks at the Bürgenstock resort were postponed, while adding that Switzerland remained ready to facilitate negotiations and that preparatory work was continuing.

The renewed movement followed a Lebanon ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah after a sharp escalation threatened to derail the US-Iran process. A senior US official said the ceasefire took effect around 4 p.m. local time, and Reuters said two Hezbollah sources and a senior Israeli official confirmed it.