US has ‘every attempt to get’ Iran deal done Sunday, Ambassador Waltz says

US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said that while he didn’t want to get ahead of an announcement, President Donald Trump still «has every attempt for» the preliminary framework of a peace deal with Iran to be signed Sunday.

«How will this [signing] work, and how confident are you that it will happen today?» asked ABC’s «This Week» co-anchor Martha Raddatz.

«Well, the president has every attempt for it to happen. I’ll leave the current details and timing to the White House. The Iranians are incredibly difficult negotiators, coupled — coupled with the fact that they’re having a very hard time getting guidance from their supreme leader, and they’re not always on the same page within their team,» Waltz said.

But still, the ambassador insisted Trump and US negotiators are «confident» the deal will happen.

«They have every attempt to get this done today,» he said.

US officials and Iranian officials have signaled a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and negotiate remaining issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program over a 60-day period. But while Trump said a signing would occur on Sunday, Iran has not confirmed that timeline; a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry said Saturday there was a high possibility the memorandum of understanding is finalized in the coming days.

It’s unclear what exactly the US and Iran have agreed to. A senior administration official told reporters Friday that it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and lead to «the dismantling» of Iran’s nuclear program and the US getting Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

«The highly enriched uranium has to go. Their enrichment capabilities, they have to walk away from. Their support for terrorist proxies has to end,» Waltz said on «This Week.»

«And they have agreed to that?» Raddatz interjected.

«And all of those things, they are — they are agreeing to,» Waltz said, but he also noted that the deal is only a memorandum of understanding and «a lot of these details are going to be worked out as we go forward into the next round of negotiation.»

Waltz says there were ‘huge gaps’ in Obama deal

Waltz said there «are some very important differences» between the deal now being worked out and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

«Number one, as the vice president has said repeatedly, this is going to be, in terms of any unfrozen assets or sanctions relief, what’s called pay for performance. There will not be upfront cash, so to speak,» Waltz said. «And then secondarily, this is all about verification. And there were huge gaps in the JCPOA and the Obama nuclear deal in terms of actually verifying.»

«The Iranians have tended to cheat on in the past. There were not anytime, anywhere inspections of their facilities,» he continued. «The Iranians could delay things. They could choose which list of inspectors they accepted or not. And most importantly, Martha, the Iranians could classify sites as military sites that were then off limits.»

Without seeing details of the memo, it’s impossible to say definitively how the agreements compare. Under the 2015 deal, the US, European countries and the United Nations agreed to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but only after Iran took verifiable steps toward implementing the deal. Six months after the deal was signed, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency certified Iran had met its initial commitments and sanctions were lifted. The 2015 deal also included verification provisions to ensure Iran complied with the terms of the agreement.

«I can promise you that we are not going to have these massive loopholes,» Waltz asserted.

JCPOA realistic negotiator Sherman says timeframe isn’t

Former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was one of the primary negotiators for the Obama administration during the 2015 talks. In a separate interview on «This Week,» she predicted whatever deal Trump achieves «will probably turn out somewhat similar» to the JCPOA.

«We’re in a very different place, however, because we did not have virtually a thousand pounds of 60% highly enriched uranium, which is quite concerning,» Sherman said.

Sherman said she did not believe the timeframe for the next step of negotiations was realistic.

«I can assure you they will not get all of this done in 60 days. Some of my colleagues negotiated what was known as the Joint Plan of Action, which was a short-term deal to give us six months to come to a final resolution. It took us 18 months. This is a highly technical negotiation,» she said.

Big picture, Sherman said from his perspective, the regime in Iran has «more hardliners in place» than before.

«Iran feels very full of itself. It knows that the Strait of Hormuz is now a leverage point for them. They feel that they have outlasted the United States of America. They are feeling very proud and very sure of themselves. I think this will be a very tough negotiation, but Iran does need economic help,» she said.

On the Strait of Hormuz — the critical waterway in the region in which about 20% of the global oil supply transits — Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with Iranian state TV Friday that control of the strait will be different once it does reopen.

«Services in the Strait of Hormuz will carry a cost, and that the future management of the strait will differ from the past,» Araghchi said.

Waltz said imposing any sort of toll is «not acceptable» and «frankly, illegal.»

«That’s clear in the UN law of the sea. It’s clear in multiple resolutions that we just passed with a record number of countries supporting it, reinforcing that. It’s completely unacceptable,» he said. «And frankly — frankly, even the Chinese, Martha, during the summit with Xi and President Trump and in multiple calls since they have made it clear to the Iranians, it’s unacceptable behavior.»

Oil expert says prices could still rise if strait is reopened

Oil industry expert Bob McNally, the founder and president of Rapidan Energy Group, told Raddatz in a separate interview that once there’s a deal and the strait is reopened, «we should be hopeful that oil can flow.»

Oil prices have dropped from their peak in April, but gas and diesel prices are still up nearly 40% since the start of the war.

But, McNally cautioned, oil and gas prices could still trend up later in the summer even if the strait is reopened.

«The risk is, and here’s the risk, even if Hormuz reopens, and we see those tankers flow in the coming weeks — and we’ll probably see lower gasoline prices in the coming weeks — there’s a risk that that hole will be with us, if you will, in July and August, and that we could still see upward prices, upward pressure on prices later this summer, because of the size of the hole that has been ripped into the global oil market,» McNally said.

And if this falls through, he warned: «It would be really bad news for the American economy, the global economy, for our consumers, if we don’t get a deal and Hormuz remains closed through the summer.»