The memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran has been, at various points over the past two weeks, finalised, nearly finalised, sent back for amendments, re-finalised, awaiting Trump’s signature, and then not awaiting Trump’s signature because Trump had decided to add more conditions. As of this morning, it has still not been signed. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. TTF gas futures, which briefly dipped on deal optimism yesterday, are back above €49 per megawatt-hour.
This is where Europe sits: watching a negotiation it cannot influence, over a waterway it depends on, between two governments that have made a habit of announcing agreements that then require more negotiation.
What the MOU actually says
The terms of the draft have been reported in enough detail by enough outlets — Axios, CNN, the Times of Israel, the Hill, PBS — that the main provisions are no longer in serious dispute, even if the Iranian side has contested some of the characterisations.
The 60-day MOU would state that shipping through the Strait of Hormuz will be “unrestricted” — no tolls, no harassment — and that Iran will have to remove all mines from the strait within 30 days. The US naval blockade would be lifted in proportion to the restoration of commercial shipping. The US would issue sanctions waivers to allow Iran to sell oil freely. The MOU would include an Iranian commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon, and the first issues to be negotiated during the 60-day window would be how to dispose of Iran’s highly enriched uranium and how to address Iranian enrichment going forward.
A US official described the core principle as “relief for performance”: Iran wanted funds unfrozen immediately and permanent sanctions relief, but the US position is that the pace of relief tracks the pace of Iranian compliance. The faster the Iranians clear the mines and let shipping resume, the faster the blockade lifts.
Iran’s reading of the same text is somewhat different. Iranian state outlet Fars, responding to Trump’s public characterisation of the deal, described his account as “a mixture of truth and lies,” and said that Iranian officials had made clear there was “no such clause” requiring the strait to open without tolls. Tehran’s stated position is that after the US blockade is lifted, Iran will open the strait “based on its predetermined arrangements,” which could include monitoring and inspecting ships, providing services, and providing security — language that the US side has explicitly said is unacceptable.
That gap — between “unrestricted” and “based on Iran’s predetermined arrangements” — is the clause that has held up the signing for more than a week.
The week that was
The chronology of the past ten days deserves to be laid out plainly, because the pattern it reveals is more informative than any single statement from either side.
On May 23, Trump posted on Truth Social that an agreement had been “largely negotiated, subject to finalization.” He said details would be announced shortly. Iranian President Pezeshkian was photographed that same day meeting Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir in Tehran — one of the primary mediators. Oil futures dropped sharply overnight. TTF eased.
On May 24, Trump said the probability of a deal was “about fifty-fifty.” He told his team not to rush, adding that time was on America’s side.
On May 28, Axios and CNN reported that negotiators had actually reached agreement on the MOU text, but that it still needed Trump’s final approval. Vice President Vance told reporters it was “TBD” whether Trump would sign, noting the two sides were still negotiating over “a couple of language points.” He said: “I think it’s hard to say exactly when or if the president is going to sign the MOU.” The same day, Iran’s IRGC navy fired warning shots at four vessels near the strait attempting to pass without Iranian authorisation. The ceasefire, Vance said, was “a little messy” but “very much holding.”
A spokesperson for the Iranian delegation claimed officials had secured the release of half of Iran’s blocked overseas assets — roughly $12 billion — to be included in the MOU. Neither the US Treasury nor the State Department confirmed this.
On May 29, Trump emerged from a two-hour Situation Room meeting with no update on his “final determination.” The New York Times and other outlets reported that Trump had sent the MOU draft back to Iran, demanding an amendment specifying the timing and extent of Iran’s nuclear commitments, and stipulating clearly that Iran must end its control over the Strait of Hormuz immediately upon signing — not gradually, not conditionally, immediately.
On June 1, the Soufan Center published its assessment: “Efforts by US and Iranian leaders to present a potential war-ending agreement as a victory are holding up the finalization of a preliminary memorandum of understanding, even as both sides insist an agreement is at hand.” That is a diplomatically precise description of a negotiation where the politics of optics have overtaken the politics of substance.
On June 4, TTF prices jumped more than 3% to above €49/MWh as Middle East tensions intensified and talks remained stalled. The US military said Iran had fired several ballistic missiles toward regional neighbours, intercepted by American and allied forces over Kuwait and Bahrain; the US responded by striking an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island.
As of this morning, June 5, the MOU has not been signed.
What the price record shows
European gas traders have been functioning as something close to a real-time lie detector for the optimism emanating from both Washington and Tehran. The TTF price history since February 28 is a direct readout of how much the market actually believed each statement.
When the conflict began, TTF climbed from the low €30s to more than €60/MWh within days. EU gas storage at the time was around 30% full, below the prior year’s level, with Germany’s inventories at roughly 21.6% — near multi-year lows.
When the initial two-week ceasefire was announced on April 8, TTF dropped 20% in a single session, falling from around €53/MWh to €44/MWh. Europe’s gas prices had risen roughly 60% between February 28 and April 7.
Since the ceasefire, prices have stabilised in a range that encodes exactly the market’s assessment of where the negotiation stands: not in crisis, not resolved. The €49/MWh level that TTF has been trading around for the past several weeks is approximately 35–40% above where prices were before the conflict began. By end-April, the TTF and Asian JKM benchmarks remained around 45–60% above pre-war levels, moving broadly in sync, while the Henry Hub benchmark in the US showed little movement over the same period — a divergence that reflects the geographic concentration of the disruption’s impact on LNG markets.
The structural problem underneath the price is that gas, despite accounting for only 18–20% of EU total electricity generation, disproportionately drives power costs because of the EU’s marginal pricing market design. When TTF spikes, day-ahead electricity prices in gas-reliant nations like Italy and Germany soar to €120–150/MWh; countries with more diverse energy mixes, like France and Spain, experience much smaller impacts, maintaining prices closer to €60–80/MWh. The Hormuz crisis, in other words, is not hitting Europe evenly.
The nuclear clause is the real obstacle
The Hormuz reopening terms, frustrating as the gap between “unrestricted” and “Iran’s predetermined arrangements” is, are probably bridgeable. Both sides have economic incentives to get ships moving. Iran’s closure of the strait has damaged its own exports and its own economy at a moment when its budget cannot easily absorb the pressure.
The nuclear clause is harder. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters there would be no sanctions relief until Iranians agreed to turn over their highly enriched uranium stockpile. Trump’s own Truth Social post, published May 29, demanded that Iran “agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb” and specified that the HEU stockpile must be destroyed. Reuters quoted a senior Iranian source saying Tehran had not agreed to hand over its highly enriched uranium, adding that the nuclear issue was not part of the preliminary agreement at all.
These are not “a couple of language points.” They are the fundamental dispute that has defined US-Iran relations since 2015. The JCPOA negotiations of that year took more than a decade of preparatory groundwork; the framework that eventually emerged required Iran to reduce its HEU stockpile by 98% and cap enrichment at 3.67%, in exchange for sanctions relief. That deal collapsed when Trump withdrew from it in 2018. What is now being attempted, in the context of an active war, with a two-week ceasefire that has been punctuated by missile exchanges and airstrikes, is something considerably more complicated.
Whether a 60-day MOU can serve as a genuine bridge to that kind of agreement — or whether it simply kicks the hardest questions into a negotiation window that itself may collapse — is what nobody on either side can currently answer. The Soufan Center’s read, from June 1, is that both governments are primarily worried about who will be seen to have won. That is not a foundation on which durable agreements are typically built.
What Brussels can do, which is not much
The EU has no formal role in these negotiations. It is not a mediator. It has no military presence in the Gulf. Its diplomatic channels into Tehran are limited and have been further constrained by the conflict. What it has is exposure — to the energy prices, the supply disruption, and the knock-on effects on industrial competitiveness, inflation, and winter storage — without a seat at the table where those conditions are being negotiated.
The one thing the EU has been able to do is engage at the margins of the diplomatic process. Kaja Kallas’s framing in March — that the Hormuz closure “hurts the global economy and helps Russia fund its war” — was an attempt to put European interests on the public record, to link the Middle East crisis to the Ukraine conflict in a way that obliged Washington to at least acknowledge the connection. It did not change the pace or direction of the talks.
If the MOU is eventually signed and the strait reopens, even partially, TTF will drop and Brussels will gain some room to rebuild storage heading into winter. If the talks collapse and the ceasefire breaks down further, European governments will face a second energy shock on top of the first, with storage levels that remain below where they should be and a summer injection season that has already been compromised. The third scenario — which is where the market is currently priced — is continued ambiguity: a ceasefire that holds loosely, a strait that remains partially closed, negotiations that make incremental progress and then stall, and prices that stay elevated without quite reaching the crisis levels of March.
For European energy ministers, that third scenario is in some ways the most difficult to manage. A clear resolution you can plan around. A clear breakdown you can respond to. Persistent uncertainty, month after month, depletes the political attention and the fiscal space that managing the situation actually requires.
The MOU is still, as of this morning, unsigned. The June 5 talks that were flagged as the next fixed point on the calendar are proceeding. Whether they produce a signed document today, or another round of statements describing a deal that requires further negotiation, will be known by tonight.
Sources:
Axios, “Exclusive: What’s inside the Iran deal Trump is close to signing” (May 24, 2026), https://www.axios.com/2026/05/24/iran-deal-strait-hormuz-sanctions-nuclear;
CNN live updates, US-Iran ceasefire (May 28, 2026), https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/28/world/live-news/iran-war-us-news; Times of Israel, “White House: US, Iran negotiators have agreed to MoU, but Trump’s approval still needed,” https://www.timesofisrael.com/white-house-us-iran-negotiators-have-agreed-to-mou-but-trumps-approval-still-needed/;
CBS News live updates, US-Iran war (May 30–June 1, 2026), https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/iran-war-us-trump-vance-ceasefire-strait-of-hormuz-deal-close/;
CNBC, “Trump ends Iran meeting without announcing final determination on deal” (May 29, 2026), https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/29/trump-iran-deal-hormuz-nuclear-war.html;
The Soufan Center, “US-Iran Distrust Holds Up an Agreement” (June 1, 2026),https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2026-june-1/
