President Donald Trump has lashed out at people who say he went too easy on Iran, calling them fools, just as the two sides head into Switzerland for talks on putting their new peace agreement into practice.
The row broke out hours after Trump put his signature to the deal in thick black ink during a candlelit dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris on Wednesday. The setting carried its own weight: Versailles is where the treaty ending the First World War was signed more than a century ago, and Macron, fresh off hosting the G7 summit, reportedly called out “bravo” as Trump put pen to paper.
By Thursday, Trump was firing back at those questioning the agreement. “These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid,” he wrote on social media.
Oil prices did fall, dropping more than three per cent on Thursday and extending a slide that began once news of the deal first emerged at the weekend. The agreement is meant to end the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran, a war that ran for five weeks before a ceasefire took hold in early April and left shipping through the Strait of Hormuz badly disrupted, pushing energy prices up in the process.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, also put his name to the agreement. A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, said the focus now shifts to testing whether the deal actually works in practice. Pakistan, which helped broker the talks, had its prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, sign as well. He said the agreement takes effect immediately and that Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz without delay.
What follows is a sixty-day window for working out the harder questions, chiefly Iran’s nuclear programme, which Washington has long suspected hides ambitions to build a bomb. Macron described the deal as one that opens the door to peace, lets ships pass through Hormuz without paying tolls, and gives both sides two months to settle matters on nuclear work, missiles and wider regional activity.
There was some mix-up over the next steps. The plan had been for a separate signing ceremony at a Swiss mountain resort on Friday, involving Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and US Vice President JD Vance. Baqaei said that ceremony was no longer necessary, but Sharif insisted it would still go ahead, alongside technical discussions.
Under the agreement, Washington will lift oil sanctions that have squeezed Iran’s economy for years. Once a final nuclear settlement is reached, the United States has also agreed to help release a $300 billion reconstruction fund backed by countries in the region.
Rafael Grossi, who heads the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, told reporters in Geneva that his agency is ready to set out the practical steps needed to carry the deal forward. American officials say Iran will reduce its stock of enriched uranium, possibly by processing it down on-site under UN supervision. Iran’s missile programme, something Israel had pushed hard to see dismantled, was left out of the text entirely. Baqaei was blunt about that: Iranian missiles exist for firing, not for bargaining away, and the country’s defence capability is not up for discussion with anyone.
Inside Iran, hardliners have grumbled, comparing the recent fighting to the brutal eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1980s. Ghalibaf went further, framing the outcome as a defeat for Washington, while Pezeshkian called it historic. Back home, Trump’s choice to wind down a war that cost thirteen American service members their lives and burned through a large share of US ammunition stocks has rattled some of his own allies. He seemed to anticipate the pushback, telling the G7 he was ready to “bomb the hell” out of Iran again if it breaks the terms.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a fellow Republican, was not impressed, describing the deal as the worst foreign policy mistake in decades and arguing that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions remain unchecked while it has learned that threatening Hormuz pays off. Even Fox News, usually friendly territory for the president, aired criticism that Iran walked away with major financial relief without giving up its nuclear programme.
One front the deal barely touches is Lebanon, even though the text says the country should form part of the wider picture. Fighting there flared after Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in March in support of Iran, prompting a heavy Israeli response that included a ground invasion. Violence has eased since the deal was announced, but an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon killed one person on Thursday, a reminder that the wider region is still far from settled.
