US and Iran sign deal digitally, ceremony set for Friday

What was unclear in the morning arrived by evening, and in a form that matters well beyond the region: every time the major powers align on the Middle East, the consequences for energy prices, shipping routes and the tone of European diplomacy ripple outward. The memorandum between the United States and Iran was digitally signed on June 15 by US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with word that the official signing ceremony will take place on Friday, June 19, in all likelihood in Switzerland.

The center of gravity, then, has shifted. The question is no longer whether a deal was reached, which was announced earlier, but the mechanics of the signature itself. A digital endorsement ahead of the physical ceremony serves a dual purpose: it locks the text before each side carries it home for internal review, while preserving room for a formal, on-camera moment that carries its own political weight. Pakistan, acting as mediator, confirmed that implementation begins only after Friday’s signing, meaning that until then nothing on the ground is formally binding.

What exactly takes effect after Friday?

The substance of the memorandum runs along two parallel tracks. The first is security: the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of the world’s oil traffic passes, is to reopen within 30 days, with a full lifting of the US naval blockade over the same period. The second is nuclear: technical talks lasting 60 days begin after Friday, with nuclear matters scheduled for the first 30 days of that process. It is a timeline that deliberately separates the symbolism of the signature from the actual engineering work of verification.

Vance framed the urgency in language that leaves little room for ambiguity. “We want to publish the full text this week and the agreement ensures that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” the vice president said, tying the administration’s credibility to a text that is not yet public. Support came from Paris with a concrete offer attached: French President Emmanuel Macron called for swift and full implementation and proposed deploying naval forces to secure the strait. With that, the European stake in the deal moves from an observer’s seat to an operational one.

Where does the open question remain?

The widest crack, for now, is money. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claims that half of the 24 billion dollars in frozen assets would be released, while US officials say that so far nothing has been freed. That gap is not a technical footnote but a core test of trust: if the figures are not reconciled before Friday, the ceremony will endorse a text the two sides still count differently. This is precisely why a digital signature ahead of the physical one is useful, allowing the contested points to be smoothed over while the spotlights are still off.

For Serbia and the wider region, the practical questions are more grounded than the grand geopolitics. Reopening Hormuz and lifting the blockade bear directly on the stability of oil prices, and with them on the cost of fuel and transport here. The diplomatic channel leading to Geneva also shows that Switzerland remains the preferred neutral ground for talks that neither Washington nor Tehran wishes to hold on its own soil. If the numbers around the frozen assets are still disputed on Friday, is the signing ceremony the end of the crisis or merely the start of a new round of bargaining?