Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan: the nuclear sites Iran still won't open

IAEA inspectors remain locked out of Iran's three bombed nuclear sites as the ceasefire with the US frays.

Last Updated August 2026| 24 min read

This piece is for anyone trying to figure out whether the Iran ceasefire is actually holding, whether the Strait of Hormuz is safe to ship through right now, and whether Iran's nuclear program is under any real outside verification. If you are a shipping or insurance professional pricing Hormuz risk, a student or analyst tracking Middle East diplomacy, or just someone tired of headlines that contradict each other week to week, the short answer is this: as of August 2026, the ceasefire framework signed in June has broken down in practice, even though nobody has formally declared it dead. Inspectors still cannot reach the three sites that matter most, and both governments are now telling two different stories about whether talks are even taking place.

The US-Iran talks have gone through more collapses and restarts than most people can track. There was a war in between. A supreme leader was killed. A ceasefire was signed, then shot at within two weeks, and by early August the two sides could not even agree in public on whether they were still negotiating. No guessing about what might happen next year, just what is actually on the record as of today. Iran's standoff with Washington is one entry in a longer 2026 pattern of governments under pressure, a theme USA Beam has tracked across several countries where leadership keeps falling, and it sits alongside domestic unrest that has reshaped politics well beyond the Gulf, including the youth-driven protest movements reshaping government legitimacy across South Asia. The 2026 World Cup has run on a completely separate track through all of this, including Uzbekistan's group stage run, covered separately on USA Beam, which is a strange thing to sit alongside a live war, but has been the reality of this year's news cycle.

How the Iran-US talks started in 2025

The current round of diplomacy began on April 12, 2025. President Trump sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and gave Iran 60 days to reach an agreement. The first meeting happened that same day in Oman, led by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.

Both sides called the discussion constructive. A second round followed in Rome on April 19, 2025. A third round took place in Muscat about a week later. All three rounds were indirect, meaning the two delegations sat in separate rooms while Omani officials carried messages back and forth.

A fourth round was supposed to happen in Vienna. It never did.

The war that stopped everything

Iran and the 60-day deadline did not produce a deal. On June 13, 2025, Israel launched large-scale strikes on Iran's military leadership and nuclear scientists. Iran suspended the negotiations indefinitely. The United States followed with its own strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, and the diplomatic track went dark for months.

Talks only came back after large protests broke out inside Iran in early 2026, per the Wikipedia timeline of the negotiations. On February 6, 2026, the US and Iran held fresh indirect talks in Muscat, mediated again by Oman's foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi.

That window closed fast, too. On February 27, the US State Department declared Iran a state sponsor of wrongful detention. Several embassies pulled staff out of Iran that same week.

February 28: the day the 2026 war started

On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched a coordinated wave of strikes on Iran. The stated goal, according to the House of Commons Library briefing, was regime change and the destruction of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes. So was Ali Larijani, a senior figure who had been involved in earlier rounds of negotiation. Iran named Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the new Supreme Leader and launched counter-strikes against Israel, US bases in the region, and targets across several Arab states.

Iran also closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries a large share of the world's oil and gas shipments. On March 6, Trump said only Iran's unconditional surrender would be acceptable, and he set a string of deadlines: March 21, then March 23, then April 7.

Two ceasefires, two blockades: the road back to the table

On April 7, 2026, the US and Iran announced a temporary two-week ceasefire. It held long enough for both sides to test the water on restarting talks, but progress stayed slow through most of April and May. Six days after the ceasefire, on April 13, the US launched its first naval blockade of Iranian ports after Iran kept attempting to reroute shipping through its own territorial waters and attacking vessels that refused, according to a UK Parliament research briefing on the Hormuz reopening effort. That first blockade ran until June 18, when the memorandum signed the day before formally lifted it.

On April 25, Trump cancelled a planned envoy trip to Islamabad for a fresh round of talks. He cited what he described as internal divisions inside Iran's leadership.

By May 17, Trump had reportedly attached five conditions to any resumption of negotiations. Iran would need to hand over 400 kilograms of enriched uranium to the United States, keep only one operational nuclear facility running, accept that talks were tied to an actual end of hostilities, and give up demands for reparations. The US also refused to release at least 25 percent of Iran's frozen assets as part of any early deal.

Reports of a broader peace agreement started circulating on May 24, 2026.

The June 17 memorandum: the turning point in US-Iran nuclear talks

On June 15 and 17, 2026, the US and Iran signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding, sometimes called the Islamabad Memorandum. Iran's Mehr News Agency published details of a draft that set a 60-day window for reaching a final settlement on the nuclear question, according to Al Jazeera's breakdown of the agreement.

The MoU covered four things. A 60-day ceasefire. The removal of the US naval blockade and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, with Iran arranging safe passage at no charge for those 60 days while the longer-term administration of the strait was worked out with Oman and other Gulf states, per a Congressional Research Service report on Hormuz security developments. A framework for sanctions relief. And the possible release of up to 25 billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets, tied to Iran's compliance.

Trump told the New York Times the final deal would cap Iran's enrichment at a level that could never be used by the military. He would not confirm whether that meant matching the old 3.67 percent ceiling from the 2015 nuclear deal. He only said Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium for nonmilitary purposes.

France, Germany, Italy, and the UK issued a joint statement saying Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon, and offered to work with the US, Iran, and the IAEA toward that goal.

Why enrichment keeps blocking Iran-US nuclear talks

Uranium enriched to 3 to 5 percent works for civilian nuclear power. Weapons-grade uranium needs 90 percent enrichment. Iran is believed to hold roughly 440 kilograms enriched to 60 percent, which puts it uncomfortably close to weapons grade if it chose to push further.

Independent analysis from the Institute for Science and International Security estimates roughly 60 to 65 percent of that stockpile sits in the Isfahan tunnel complex, with smaller portions believed to be at Fordow and Natanz. None of it has been physically reverified since before the war started.

Vice President JD Vance has said the US's core goal is a written Iranian commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon or the tools needed to build one quickly. Washington's long-standing position has been zero enrichment, full stop. Iran has rejected that position every time it has come up.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian pushed back directly after the June summit, saying Iran will not give up its right to enrich uranium. Under the old 2015 nuclear deal, Iran had agreed to cap enrichment at 3.67 percent and hold no more than 300 kilograms of enriched material, down from a prior stockpile of 10,000 kilograms. That deal collapsed after the US and European powers triggered snapback sanctions in October 2025.

The suspension law almost nobody explains properly.

Most coverage of the inspection standoff treats IAEA access as a single switch that is either on or off. It is not. Iran operates under a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, the baseline legal obligation every member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty carries. On top of that sits the Additional Protocol, a separate and voluntary layer that allows short-notice, unannounced inspections and environmental sampling, including at locations Iran has not formally declared.

On July 2, 2025, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a law, passed by parliament 221 votes to none with one abstention, suspending Iran's cooperation with the IAEA entirely, including both the baseline safeguards agreement and the Additional Protocol, according to the IAEA's own Board of Governors report from September 2025. The law bars inspectors from entering the country without a specific security guarantee from Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and it criminalizes any Iranian official who lets them in without that sign-off.

That distinction matters more than the headlines suggest. Bushehr and the Tehran research reactor access, the only access Iran has restored, is baseline safeguards-level cooperation. Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan access would require the far more intrusive Additional Protocol tier Iran suspended by law, not just by practice. A government can technically comply with the letter of a ceasefire memorandum while withholding the specific legal instrument that would make real verification possible.

A 221 to 0 parliamentary vote, with only one abstention, is not a normal legislative outcome. It reflects a rare point of consensus across Iran's usually competing hardline and reformist factions, the same kind of left-right and ideological framing USA Beam has unpacked in a separate explainer on political ideology. On the IAEA suspension law, that internal divide mostly disappeared, which is one reason the suspension has proven harder to reverse through diplomacy alone than a normal contested policy would be.

What verification would actually require

The 3.67 percent number from the old deal was not arbitrary. At that enrichment level and stockpile cap, intelligence assessments put Iran roughly a year away from weapons-grade material, which is the math that made the original agreement politically sellable in 2015.

The harder problem this time is not the number. It is verifying it. Fordow was among the sites bombed in February 2026. The IAEA's own post-strike assessment found craters at Fordow consistent with ground-penetrating munitions, and said at the time that no one, including the agency itself, was in a position to fully assess the underground damage, according to the IAEA's public update on the strikes. A new cap only means something if inspectors can account for every kilogram Iran already has, not just monitor what it produces going forward.

There is also a gap between the access Iran has granted and the access verification needs. One idea that keeps resurfacing from past rounds is a consortium model, where Iran keeps a civilian enrichment program, but international partners sit inside the actual facility rather than checking it from outside. Whether Iran would accept that kind of arrangement inside its own infrastructure is, as of now, untested.

What downblending actually involves, and why it got harder after the strikes

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has said the MoU calls for Iran's stockpile to be downblended from highly enriched levels. Almost every outlet repeats that word without explaining it. Downblending means physically mixing highly enriched uranium with natural or depleted uranium until the average enrichment across the combined material drops below a weapons-relevant threshold. It is an industrial process, not a paperwork adjustment, and it depends entirely on inspectors already knowing exactly how much material exists and where.

Four things make this harder in Iran's case than in a normal verification scenario. First, downblending needs to happen at a facility inspectors can monitor throughout the process, since material can be diverted before, during, or after mixing. Second, chain of custody has to be continuous, meaning inspectors track the material physically rather than relying on Iranian reporting. Third, and this is the part the February strikes complicated most, material accountancy depends on inspectors having verified the starting quantity. If the pre-war stockpile figures cannot be reconfirmed at Fordow and Isfahan because the sites are still sealed, there is no reliable baseline to downblend from. Fourth, Iran has a track record of slow-walking exactly this kind of monitored process during past disputes with the agency.

Put simply, downblending only proves something if inspectors can confirm what existed before the process started. Right now, that confirmation is exactly what Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan access would provide, and exactly what is missing.

Lake Lucerne: a step forward in U.S. and Iran nuclear talks

High-level talks moved to the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland on June 21 and 22, 2026. This was a genuine quadrilateral meeting, with Vance leading the US delegation alongside Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Asim Munir, plus Iran's Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

The meeting ran 18 hours straight. Vance announced that Iran had agreed to let IAEA inspectors back into the country, calling it a first step toward permanently ending Iran's nuclear weapons capability, per Al Jazeera's coverage of the summit. Both sides also agreed to set up a de-confliction cell aimed at keeping the Lebanon front from reigniting the wider war.

Vance later admitted Iran's team had threatened to walk out at one point, after Trump posted comments online that Iranian officials found insulting. He defended Trump's right to respond in kind. Within a day of that Lucerne meeting, Iran's own Foreign Ministry spokesman said the country had not actually met with Grossi and had no confirmed schedule for inspectors, a contradiction that set the pattern for most of what followed.

Doha: where Iran and the US talks stalled on the details

The 60-day MoU clock started ticking, and within two weeks, the agreement was already under strain. Late June brought a fresh round of attacks. A container ship and an oil tanker using the US-backed shipping route through Hormuz came under fire. Washington blamed Iran and struck infrastructure and military sites on Iran's southern islands in response. Iran retaliated by hitting US bases in Bahrain and Kuwait.

The two sides reached an understanding on June 28 to keep things quiet in the Strait for one week, buying room for the technical teams to keep working, according to Axios reporting from Doha.

Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Doha on June 30 for meetings with Qatar's prime minister and, the following day, with the Qatari emir. Iran denied any plan to sit down directly with the US, but confirmed it would send a technical delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, to discuss the release of frozen funds.

Araghchi and Ghalibaf, Iran's two most senior negotiators, did not show up in person. Analyst Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute told Al Jazeera that growing skepticism inside Iran's government about the MoU likely explains why its top officials stayed away from the cameras. Sending a deputy to handle a technical file while keeping the political leadership away from the room is its own kind of signal, separate from anything said on the record. This split, Tehran engaging on financial and shipping logistics through deputies while its senior leadership avoids direct contact, has stayed consistent through every round since Doha.

What Doha produced

On July 1, Trump described the meetings as very good. Qatari and Pakistani mediators said separate sessions with the US and Iranian sides produced positive progress on issues tied to the memorandum.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Gharibabadi said the two delegations agreed to set up a communication channel to track and report violations of the MoU. He also said part of a 6 billion dollar tranche of frozen funds would be released so Iran could buy goods it needs. US officials reportedly disputed that this specific understanding had been reached.

Saudi outlet Al Arabiya reported a narrower figure: an agreement on releasing a first batch of 3 billion dollars, held by Qatar, with some of it coming from the US financial system. Qatar currently holds around 12 billion dollars of Iran's frozen assets, which is part of why Doha has become the center of gravity for these negotiations.

Shipping data from Kpler showed commercial vessel movements through the Strait of Hormuz rose more than 50 percent in the week of June 22 to 28, compared to the week before. That was one of the only hard numbers at the time suggesting the ceasefire was producing a real economic effect. It did not hold, as the sections below cover.

Reading the Hormuz insurance market like a risk desk, not a headline reader

Most coverage of this story tracks strikes, ceasefires, and shipping volume. What it usually skips is that the commercial shutdown of the strait actually came before the physical one. Within 48 hours of the February 28 strikes, major marine insurers pulled coverage, and Lloyd's Joint War Committee redesignated the entire Arabian Gulf as a conflict zone, before Iran had laid a single mine.

War risk premiums for tankers crossing the strait sat around 0.15 percent of a ship's value before the war. They climbed as high as 2.5 percent by March, eased to roughly 1 percent by late March as more ships tested the route, then jumped again to between 3 and 8 percent by mid-May, according to reporting from Khaleej Times on the shipping cost picture. For a single large tanker, that range is the difference between a few hundred thousand dollars in insurance and several million dollars for one transit.

Underneath that headline number sits a market most outlets never break apart. Hull and machinery war risk cover, which insures the vessel itself, is priced and renewed separately from protection and indemnity, or P&I, war risk cover, which handles crew injury, pollution, and third-party liability. The two layers move on different timelines because they sit with different underwriting syndicates and different renewal cycles. On top of both sits the Joint War Committee's own listing decision for Hormuz, made in London, which filters down into individual underwriter pricing days or weeks later rather than instantly. A fourth signal, informal but closely watched inside shipping companies, is seafarer hazard bonus pay, extra compensation crews are paid for transiting a listed war zone. That figure has stayed elevated even during weeks when the headline premium eased, because captains and crew unions price their own risk independently of what underwriters charge.

The Lloyd's Market Association has been clear that the slowdown was never really about insurance being unavailable. Coverage stayed available through most of the crisis. What changed was the price and the willingness of ship owners and captains to accept the risk to crew and vessel, even when a policy existed, a distinction the LMA laid out directly in its own market statement.

By April, private insurers had reached the edge of what they could absorb, and the US government stepped in with its own backstop. The Development Finance Corporation set up a reinsurance facility offering up to 40 billion dollars in coverage for hull, cargo, and liability risk tied to Hormuz transits, a move detailed in a World Economic Forum analysis of the intervention. A private market needing a government-backed reinsurance facility to keep functioning is not a small detail. It also changes the underwriting math going forward, since a facility absorbing tail risk lets private insurers reprice lower than the raw risk would otherwise justify, which is one reason premium levels alone can undersell how fragile the situation still is. USA Beam's earlier look at the strait's closing and reopening cycle covers how often this pattern has repeated since February.

USA Beam's earlier coverage of hidden failures in network infrastructure describes a similar pattern away from geopolitics entirely: the outage the public eventually sees is usually the last stage of a failure that started somewhere upstream and invisible. Insurance premiums, listing decisions, and hazard pay for Hormuz work the same way. They move before the oil price does, and together they are a better early read on whether a ceasefire is holding than any single headline.

The legal fight over whether the sanctions are even valid

Most coverage treats the sanctions reimposed on Iran in September 2025 as a settled fact. They are not settled, and the disagreement over their legal status is a direct reason the frozen-asset talks in Doha kept stalling on wording rather than numbers.

On August 28, 2025, France, Germany, and the UK, known together as the E3, notified the UN Security Council that Iran was in significant non-performance of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, triggering the snapback mechanism built into Resolution 2231. The Council had 30 days to vote to continue sanctions relief. It did not, and the previously lifted sanctions returned automatically on September 27, 2025, a process the Congressional Research Service lays out in detail.

Iran, China, and Russia dispute that any of this was valid. In an October 18, 2025, letter to the Security Council, the three governments argued that Resolution 2231 contained a self-executing termination clause, meaning the Council's consideration of Iran's nuclear file, and the snapback mechanism along with it, had already expired on that same date. Under this reading, there was nothing left to snap back to. The E3 and the US maintain the opposite: that the snapback was triggered validly before expiration and the sanctions are legally binding, a position the US restated as recently as a December 2025 Security Council session covered by the Security Council Report.

Neither side has backed down. That contested legal status is a quiet but real reason banks and governments hesitate to fully release frozen Iranian funds, since compliance risk becomes harder to price when the underlying sanctions regime itself is disputed.

Why frozen funds keep getting announced but never arrive

Here is the part that explains why the 3 billion, 6 billion, and 25 billion dollar figures keep circulating without any confirmed transfer landing in an Iranian account. Banks do not wait for the Resolution 2231 legal dispute to resolve before deciding how much risk they will carry. They price the disputed legal question itself as a compliance risk, and that risk does not disappear even if Iran, China, and Russia turn out to be correct that the underlying resolution had already expired.

US enforcement of secondary sanctions through the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control does not require the underlying primary sanctions to be legally uncontested. A European or Gulf bank moving Iranian funds typically needs a US dollar clearing relationship to complete the transaction. US correspondent banks in that chain generally decline to process the payment rather than make their own legal judgment about whether Resolution 2231 had expired before the snapback took effect. That single choke point, not the political agreement itself, is usually what determines whether a headline number becomes an actual wire transfer.

This is why reported fund releases so often mean an agreement in principle rather than cash moving. The precedent goes back to earlier sanctions relief episodes, where political agreements consistently outpaced the banking infrastructure needed to move money through channels that would not expose a bank to US enforcement risk. Until that infrastructure problem is solved, independent of who is legally right about the snapback, the Doha figures will likely keep moving in headlines without matching movement in Iran's actual accounts.

Checking the ceasefire claims against the record

What people assume	What is actually confirmed
The ceasefire ended the war	It was a 60-day framework tied to the MoU, not a peace treaty, and the US reimposed its naval blockade on Iranian ports in early August after strikes resumed in July.
IAEA inspectors have full access again	Ghalibaf confirmed inspectors remain limited to Bushehr and the Tehran research reactor, not Fordow, Natanz, or Isfahan, and Iran's own 2025 suspension law legally covers Additional Protocol access, the tier real verification would need
The frozen assets are being released.d	Iran and the US have not agreed on the figure, with reported numbers ranging from 3 billion to 6 billion dollars, and correspondent banking risk means agreements in principle rarely turn into confirmed transfers quickly
The strait is back to normal.	Traffic rose through late June, but the US reimposed its blockade and proposed a 20 percent toll on cargo passing through Hormuz in July, while Iran's parliament has separately reviewed a plan to ban US- and Israel-linked vessels and charge its own toll.
The two sides are still negotiating directly.	As of early August, Trump insists talks are ongoing while Iran's Foreign Ministry publicly denies any direct negotiations are taking place, saying it is instead in separate talks with Oman over a coastal shipping route.

USA Beam's guide to wireless communication infrastructure covers a version of this same problem in a completely different context: systems that stay invisible right up until they fail, at which point everyone downstream feels it at once. The sanctions architecture and the shipping lanes both work that way. Nobody outside the negotiating rooms sees the strain building until a specific threshold breaks, whether that threshold is a bank's compliance tolerance or a captain's willingness to sail.

What happened after Doha: strikes resumed, and the blockade came back

Vice President Vance told CNN on July 1 that the Doha talks were going well, though still early, and that discussions specifically on the nuclear issue were about to begin. Sina Toossi of the Center for International Policy pushed back on how much weight to put on that framing, noting the July 1 talks focused mainly on Lebanon and Hormuz, not the nuclear file itself. Ghalibaf denied on July 2 that IAEA inspectors had access to Fordow, Natanz, or Isfahan, confirming they remained limited to Bushehr and the Tehran reactor, according to The Times of Israel's live coverage from Tehran.

Funeral processions for the late Supreme Leader ran from July 4 through July 9, with both sides pausing talks and the US holding off on strikes for the duration. That pause did not last. By July 8, strikes between Iran and the US resumed, and on July 13 Trump announced the US would reimpose its naval blockade of Iranian ports while proposing a new arrangement for the strait: other countries could move cargo through Hormuz, but the US would charge a 20 percent toll as compensation for providing security, a shift from its earlier position that the strait should carry no fees at all, according to NPR's coverage of the announcement. Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi responded that safe passage compensation was a reasonable principle in itself, without conceding the specific figure.

Iran's parliament has since reviewed its own competing plan, one that would ban vessels linked to the US and Israel from the strait entirely while charging other countries a separate toll, a proposal the Trump administration has rejected, per NPR's early August reporting. By the first weekend of August, Trump said he had called off a planned large-scale strike because of what he described as progress in talks, then said negotiations would resume on Monday, August 3. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei denied that any such talks were happening, saying instead that Tehran was focused exclusively on a separate arrangement with Oman for a coastal shipping route around the strait, and accused the US of having already violated its June commitments once the blockade returned.

Trump responded by calling Iran's leadership unbelievably duplicitous and said Tehran was facing what he called its last chance before further military action, while also noting he faces no domestic time pressure to close a deal since he is not himself seeking reelection. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the same week there was a real chance of an agreement specifically on reopening the strait within a day or two, even as Tehran continued denying any direct US contact. That contradiction, both governments describing the same days in opposite terms, is the clearest single indicator of how unsettled the situation remains going into the second half of August.

Security risk is still on the table.

This is not a calm diplomatic process running on a quiet track. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in late June that Iran's new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is a marked target. Araghchi responded by warning Iran would launch an immediate, powerful response to any Israeli strike and demanded the US restrain its ally.

The US Navy has kept the Nimitz-class carrier USS Abraham Lincoln stationed in the Arabian Sea. A source close to Trump told Axios he was frustrated enough by the late June attacks in the Strait that he asked for a full briefing on military options again, before advisers convinced him to let the Doha negotiations continue. By early August, that frustration had translated into an actual reimposed blockade rather than just a briefing.

Trump himself has said publicly that force remains an option if the nuclear talks fail, language he repeated in August with more explicit terms than in earlier months.

What is holding up a final deal

Several issues remain unresolved heading into a period neither side will confirm is still governed by the original memorandum.

• Iran wants confirmed control over the pace and terms of tolls or fees in the Strait of Hormuz, and has floated banningUS-S and Israel-linked ships outright. The US has proposed its own 20 percent toll and rejected Iran's ban plan, leaving the two governments with competing, incompatible visions for who administers the strait.
• Iran wants the frozen funds released on a schedule it can rely on. Washington wants Iran's compliance verified first, and correspondent banking risk slows even funds both sides have agreed to release in principle.
• Lebanon remains a separate but connected problem. Israel and Lebanon signed a ceasefire in Washington, but Israel has continued strikes inside Lebanon and says it will hold a security zone in the south for as long as it judges necessary.
• The core nuclear question, how much enrichment Iran gets to keep doing, has still not been formally negotiated. Every round so far has been about ceasefire logistics, not the enrichment cap itself.
• The two governments cannot even agree in public on whether direct talks are currently happening, which makes it difficult for outside observers, or for markets pricing Hormuz risk, to judge how close a deal actually is.

What a final deal would probably need to include

Based on what negotiators have said on the record so far, a completed agreement would likely need to address:

• A hard enrichment ceiling for Iran, whether that mirrors the old 3.67 percent JCPOA limit or lands somewhere new.
• Full Additional Protocol level IAEA access to Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, not just the baseline safeguards access currently granted at Bushehr and the Tehran reactor.
• A concrete schedule for releasing Iran's remaining frozen assets, paired with a banking channel that does not expose intermediary banks to secondary sanctions risk.
• Permanent terms for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, replacing both the US toll proposal and Iran's competing ban and toll plan with a single administration framework both sides accept.
• Some resolution on Iran's ballistic missile program, which US officials have flagged as a related concern since it could eventually carry a nuclear warhead.

Frequently asked questions

Are the US-Iran talks still happening right now?

The two governments disagree publicly on this. Trump has said negotiations are ongoing and that Iran is facing a last chance to reach an agreement. Iran's Foreign Ministry has denied that any direct talks are taking place and says it is instead negotiating a separate coastal shipping arrangement with Oman.

Is this the same as the 2015 nuclear deal?

No. The 2015 JCPOA capped enrichment at 3.67 percent and collapsed after snapback sanctions were triggered in October 2025. The current memorandum is a separate framework signed in June 2026, built after a full war between the US, Israel, and Iran, and its 60-day window has since expired without a final settlement.

Did Iran agree to stop all uranium enrichment?

No. Iran's president has said publicly that Iran will not give up its right to enrich uranium. The US has pushed for zero enrichment in the past, and that gap has not been closed.

What happened to Iran's Supreme Leader?

Ali Khamenei was killed in the February 28, 2026, strikes that began the war. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was named as his successor.

Is the Strait of Hormuz open right now?

Commercial shipping rose sharply in late June under the temporary MoU arrangement, but the US reimposed its naval blockade in July and proposed a 20 percent toll on cargo, while Iran's parliament has reviewed a competing plan to ban US- andIsrael-linkedd vessels. War risk insurance premiums remain well above pre-war levels, and the situation stays fragile.

Are the sanctions on Iran legally settled?

No. The E3 and the US say the September 2025 snapback validly reimposed UN sanctions on Iran. Iran, China, and Russia argue that the underlying Security Council resolution had already expired before the snapback took effect. The dispute remains unresolved and is a direct reason banks hesitate to move frozen Iranian funds even when both governments say they have agreed on a figure.

What is the Additional Protocol, and why does it matter here?

It is a voluntary layer of IAEA cooperation that allows short-notice, unannounced inspections beyond a country's declared nuclear sites. Iran suspended it by law in July 2025 alongside its baseline safeguards cooperation. The access Iran has restored since, at Bushehr and the Tehran reactor, only requires the baseline agreement, not the Additional Protocol tier that inspecting Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan would actually need.

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Editor's note: All images accompanying this article were created using AI image generation. All data, figures, and case studies in the article itself are drawn from cited public sources.