‘Iran just basically put its wish list into this’: the Trump-Iran agreement gives Iran a free pass on nuclear treaty violations pending final deal

President Donald Trump may have signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran to end the war late Wednesday, but the memo doesn’t resolve a much darker question: Iran’s nuclear weapons. While Iran affirms that it won’t develop nuclear weapons in the agreement, curbing the actual process of making those weapons—stockpiling and enriching uranium—is left to be finalized later. Crucially, the memo states that in the meantime, Iran will “maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program.” “What the negotiators are trying to capture is that Iran takes no further advances with its nuclear program, but they should have considered that the status quo is pretty poor,” Andrea Stricker, a national security expert specializing in nuclear weapons, told Fortune. “If I were negotiating, I would have insisted that restoration of monitoring and access would have to be something that Iran had to do in the MOU because it’s so important.” Iran hasn’t allowed the UN watchdog responsible for monitoring nuclear materials—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—access to its nuclear facilities since its 12-day war with the U.S. and Israel last June, meaning it hasn’t been able to verify the size of Iran’s uranium stockpile for a year now. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told reporters on Thursday that moving Iran further away from building a nuclear weapon isn’t fully up to him but “depends on the political will of both sides.” “What is needed will depend on the final technical agreement that we will have,” Grossi said about the memo in the press briefing video. “I understand your curiosity, but it’s not prudent to jump ahead of facts.” The IAEA Board of Governors has formally found Iran in non-compliance with its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards obligations twice: in 2005 over past concealment and breaches, and in 2025 over failure to cooperate on undeclared nuclear material and activities since 2019. The memo commits the U.S. to terminating IAEA Board resolution