By Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv, Summer Said in Dubai and Alexander Ward in Geneva
The U.S. will allow Iran to immediately begin selling oil and fuel under the deal to end the war, offering Tehran an early financial incentive to wind down the conflict, people familiar with the agreement said.
The provision for waivers of sanctions on oil sales takes effect immediately upon signing the agreement this week and also covers necessary services including banking, transportation and insurance needed to facilitate the sales, the people said.
United Against Nuclear Iran, a nonprofit, said an Iranian supertanker carrying crude oil, Diona, had left Chabahar port, crossed the U.S. blockade and was sailing out of the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday with its location tracker active. It was the first such transit since the start of the U.S. blockade in April. Shortly afterward, a second supertanker, Hero II, also crossed the blockade, according to the nonprofit and ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic.
A draft of the memorandum of understanding reviewed by The Wall Street Journal lays out the oil sales along with the promise after further negotiations down the road of extensive sanctions relief, release of frozen assets and billions of dollars in reconstruction funding.
A senior U.S. official said Tuesday that even though Iran would get upfront sanctions relief for oil sales, sustained relief would be tied to Iran's performance on U.S. demands regarding issues like opening the strategic Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear program. Tehran still wouldn't get immediate access to billions of dollars in frozen funds.
The memorandum of understanding, which the administration says the U.S. and Iran signed electronically Sunday and will finalize this week, includes an extended pause in the fighting, including in Lebanon, lifts the U.S. and Iranian blockades in the strait and sets the stage for extended talks on Iran's nuclear program.
Many lawmakers and political officials in the U.S. and Israel are opposed to giving Iran financial relief and easing the pressure of the American blockade before securing major concessions.
Allowing Iran to export its oil concedes a key point of U.S. leverage, but one the White House felt it probably had to give up to open the Strait of Hormuz, said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran-focused senior fellow with the Washington Institute, a U.S.-based think tank.
"The White House thinks that these kinds of sweeteners are required to make Iran make concessions, and otherwise it would be very difficult to make Iran continue negotiations," Nadimi said.
He added that the U.S. could reimpose its blockade on Iranian exports as long as it keeps its military assets in the region.
The agreement provides for much greater financial relief if Iran goes along with American demands to destroy its stockpile of enriched uranium and dismantle its nuclear program.
Among its provisions is a regional reconstruction and development fund for Iran to repair damage done by the war. In a briefing Monday, senior Trump administration officials said the U.S. and Iran have discussed a fund of $300 billion for that purpose. They also said they have discussed sanctions relief and restoring Tehran's access to some of its estimated $100 billion in frozen funds.
"We're going to be willing to be extraordinarily generous in opening up their economy and opening up the sanctions relief," one of the officials said. "So I would say everything is on the table and at the same time nothing is on the table if it doesn't come along with real performance."
President Trump said on social media that the U.S. wouldn't contribute to the $300 billion fund.
The question of financial benefits for Iran is among the most sensitive for Trump's effort to conclude the war. Trump has excoriated former President Barack Obama for flying cash into Iran after a 2015 nuclear deal went into effect the following January. Trump withdrew from that deal in his first term.
Allowing oil sales could prove a more palatable means of providing Iran with financial relief.
It lets Washington give Iran a tangible economic incentive that would help lower global energy prices, said Sima Shine, a former top official at Israel's spy agency Mossad and now at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
The deal already involved the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, at which point Iran would likely have resumed its extensive oil-smuggling operations anyway, Shine said.
"It's better to legalize it and benefit from that," Shine said.
Under the memorandum of understanding, the U.S. is also willing to give Iran access to some of its frozen funds for payments determined by Iran's central bank, some of the people said.
The U.S. has some flexibility on the release of assets and could give Iran access before the conclusion of a final agreement on the nuclear and other issues, one of the people said.
Iran has said it wanted some $12 billion up front and $24 billion during the 60-day negotiation that would be opened by an initial agreement.
Iran has an estimated $100 billion in assets rendered inaccessible by U.S. sanctions, mainly revenue from past oil sales and reserves. While less lucrative than sanctions relief, assets transferred to Iran can't be reclaimed, while sanctions can be reimposed, making the benefit more durable.
The bulk of the frozen money sits abroad, most notably in China, from oil revenues generated over many years that can't be transferred to Tehran's sanctioned-banking system.
There is about $6 billion in Iranian revenue that the Biden administration allowed to be transferred to Qatar in connection with a 2023 prisoner swap, and another $1 billion held in Oman. Both amounts were later informally restricted after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
Iran also has an estimated $15 billion in Iraqi banks from sales of power and natural gas.
Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 16, 2026 15:53 ET (19:53 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments