Leaked draft of the US-Iran deal as G7 backs it

For Belgrade, which spent the entire week pricing fuel against every new move in the Middle East, the first concrete news arrived today: no longer rumors of tankers and back-channel mediation, but the substance of the document itself. CNN obtained the draft text of the agreement between the United States and Iran, and on the same day G7 leaders, closing their summit in Evian, collectively backed the deal. For the first time since the crisis began, the table shows exactly what the two sides are signing, not merely that they are signing something.

The content of the draft shifts the tone that had until yesterday been cautious and conditional. According to the document obtained by CNN, Iran will be able to export oil as soon as the deal is signed, while the text simultaneously commits Iran to never producing a nuclear weapon. Those two clauses are the core of the entire arrangement: an economic exit for Tehran in exchange for a clearly defined nuclear limit. Under the same draft, the US Treasury would immediately issue waivers for the export of Iranian oil and petrochemicals once the deal is signed, meaning the effect on the market would be almost instant rather than spread across months of technical review.

The document does not treat this step as an end, but as an opening. It sets a 60-day negotiating window for a comprehensive, final agreement on the nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions, a window in which the two sides are meant to turn a political framework into verifiable obligations. As an incentive, the draft also cites the possibility that Iran could gain access to a development fund of 300 billion dollars, but only if it meets the obligations in the nuclear portion of the arrangement. The logic is conditional and gradual, which is precisely what multilateral diplomacy usually offers as proof of seriousness: the reward comes after compliance, not before it.

What exactly does the G7 backing from Evian change?

The support of G7 leaders at the close of the Evian summit is not a mere ceremony. When the largest Western economies collectively stand behind a bilateral deal between two sides that had not spoken for years, that deal stops being merely American-Iranian and becomes part of a wider transatlantic calculation. For an agreement that rests on lifting sanctions and returning Iranian oil to the market, the stance of European capitals and the other members is not a footnote, because how effectively the waivers actually work in practice, beyond the text on paper, depends on them. The collective backing also signals to the Iranian side that the framework will not be challenged the moment the mood shifts in a single capital.

For the region around Serbia, the effect is tangible before any diplomat signs anything. The price of oil is set on expectations, and the expectation that Iranian oil is legally entering the market already shapes the price a Serbian consumer sees at the pump and that Serbian industry builds into its costs. The geopolitical reality of the Middle East is read here not as a distant subject but as a line in the domestic budget.

Why was Geneva chosen for the signing?

The 14-point memorandum of understanding, according to the draft, is to be signed in Geneva on Friday, June 19. The choice of Geneva is not accidental: it is a city where negotiations no side wants to stamp with the opponent’s host seal have been held for centuries, neutral ground that, by the very choice of venue, says neither side agreed to come to the other. The Palace of Nations as a backdrop lends the arrangement the weight of an institution rather than an improvisation.

The question that remains is how much the 14 points of the memorandum can withstand over the next 60 days, a period in which the political framework is only beginning to turn into verifiable obligations and in which every missed deadline can revive the old distrust. The draft exists, the backing exists, the date exists. Do you think Friday’s signing will deliver a lasting deal, or is this just the first of many steps that could easily be broken?