The framework deal is crucial but also just a beginningpublished at 05:56 BST

05:56 BST

Gary O’Donoghue
Chief North America Correspondent

This agreement is quite a moment for Donald Trump – celebrating not just his 80th birthday on Sunday but also a major diplomatic breakthrough.

After so many false dawns, it seems that Washington and Tehran now agree on one thing – that a memorandum of understanding has been finalised, even if the elements stressed in each capital focus on those parts each finds it easiest to stomach.

Another key apparent element of agreement is that Lebanon does feature in both sides' description of the deal – though with Israel and Hezbollah not signatories, there will be significant doubt over their willingness to go along with it.

In truth, the deal – while crucial – is just a beginning.

It will kick off a period of 60 days during which the US and Iran will have to agree on how to destroy and remove Iran's nuclear material. That in itself could easily falter.

The exact status of the Strait of Hormuz is also something over which divergent views are still apparent, and the details around the timing of sanctions relief and the unfreezing of Iranian assets is still not consistent between both parties.

Many of these questions will linger until the full final text is made public.

One thing is clear, though: Trump's assurance to the Iranian people that "help was on its way" and that, when the US was finished, the government would be theirs to take does not look likely to happen any time soon.

A framework deal to end the Iran war has been reached.

Here's what you need to know about the latest developments:

• On Sunday morning, Israel launched strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs in response to "Hezbollah’s launch of aerial targets toward Israeli territory" earlier in the day, the IDF said
• Trump said Israel's strike on Beirut "should not have happened", and urged both sides to stand down as the US and Iran were "very close to a deal"
• The strikes at first appeared to threaten the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran
• A framework deal was reached hours later, with mediator Pakistan first making the announcement
• Trump then confirmed the deal
• Iranian leadership also confirmed the deal and said it would be signed in Switzerland on Friday
• Leaders from the UK, France, Germany and Italy welcomed the announcement
• Specifics of the deal have not been officially confirmed, but Iranian state media reported that it includes an end to some US sanctions on Iran, Iran committing not to produce nuclear weapons, and a permanent ceasefire on all fronts including Lebanon
• Iran's deputy foreign minister said talks on a final deal will happen over a 60-day period

France will host the G7 in the lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains from Monday, with the seven member states expected to discuss the framework deal between the US and Iran alongside other key matters.

Although the agreement is not due to be signed until Friday, G7 leaders will likely ask US President Donald Trump for further details of the accord, with a particular emphasis on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

As we reported earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron has said leaders will also discuss the support for Lebanon under the new accord.

The informal grouping includes the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The European Union (EU) will also be in attendance this week, but does not count as one of the core "7" as it is a bloc, rather than a single nation.

Other items on the agenda for this year's summit include support for Ukraine amid its war with Russia, and the rise of artificial intelligence.

Image source, Reuters

Earlier on Sunday, US Vice-President JD Vance told Fox News that the agreement with Iran had the potential to "fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years".

"This region of the world has been a basket case for my entire life and longer than that," he told the outlet.

Vance said Donald Trump had managed to "eliminate the threat of Iran".

He added that it will now be possible "to build to a new era of Middle East prosperity and success".

"Where frankly we can generate a lot of prosperity for the American people out of that region."

Shaimaa Khalil
Los Angeles

Iran's football team has arrived in the US for the World Cup, landing in Los Angeles just as a deal was announced to halt hostilities between Iran and the US.

The deal to end the fighting between the US and Iran came just a day before the Iranian team’s opening World Cup match against New Zealand in Los Angeles, easing fears of further escalation but doing little to remove the controversy surrounding the team.

Iran's striker Mehdi Taremi told the BBC the ongoing tension has overshadowed the tournament from the moment the squad arrived.

Preparations have also been disrupted.

The team faced visa problems and was forced to move its World Cup base camp to Mexico.

When Iran takes to the pitch in LA, many in the city's large Iranian community won't be there to watch.

Some are planning protests against Fifa's ban on the pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flag, while others see the team as representing a regime they want gone.

The players insist they're here to unite Iranians and focus on football.

But for this squad, politics has been impossible to escape.

Ghoncheh Habibiazad
Senior reporter, BBC Persian

Iran's nuclear programme has been the focus of diplomatic talks, sanctions on Iran, and inspections for decades. It was often referred to by Donald Trump as the reason the US joined with Israel in launching strikes on the country in late February.

Iran maintains its programme is peaceful. The US and Israel have consistently rejected this and say there have been efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Under a nuclear deal agreed in 2015, Iran had limited its enrichment to 3.67%, which can be used to produce fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. Weapons-grade uranium is 90% enriched or more.

Iran began openly escalating its enrichment levels after Donald Trump abandoned the previous agreement in 2018.

By June last year, Iran was enriching at 60% and had amassed a stockpile of 400kg, according to the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA).

The IAEA said last week it had been able to conduct a "routine inspection" at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant recently, but it had been almost a year since inspectors had been able to access other nuclear facilities.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has welcomed "the announcement that the United States and Iran have agreed on a peace deal".

"This represents a critical step towards the peaceful settlement of the conflict," a spokesman said.

Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was among the latest group of world leaders to praise the deal.

She says Japan "strongly hopes" that "free and safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz will be ensured in practice, and that a final agreement on Iran's nuclear issue and other matters will be reached as soon as possible".

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he hopes the deal will lead to a "durable and lasting peace".

"While full recovery will take time, restoring this vital trade corridor is essential to easing pressure on energy prices and economies, including in our region," he says.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said it was a "pivotal, constructive deal" and "a step towards reducing tensions and promoting stability in a region that is critical to global economic security".

We heard before from the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Italy.

Oil reserves will not be replenished soonpublished at 03:35 BST

03:35 BST

David Waddell
Business reporter

It will take some time before global oil reserves recover.

While some tankers are already positioned to sail straight back into the Gulf, many shipping lines are likely to wait for clarity on how the deal works in practice, and for signs of sustained de‑escalation.

ADNOC, the UAE state-owned oil company, has suggested that full oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz may not resume until the first or second quarter of next year, even in the event of a firm peace agreement.

In March, the International Energy Agency announced that its member countries would release 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves. More than a third of that has already been drawn down.

While producers will seek first to meet the global oil demand (around 104m barrels per day), it will take many months for those reserves to be replenished.

The BBC's Global Affairs Correspondent, Sebastian Usher, talks through what we know so far about the initial agreement announced by the US and Iran:

What the deal means for US and Iranpublished at 02:57 BST

02:57 BST

Tom Bateman
US State Department correspondent

This agreement was ripe for taking place.

Donald Trump has been under growing pressure from the sustained hike in petrol prices which was feeding through to the highest inflation rate in the US in three years.

Iran's economy was being throttled with long-term sanctions currently tightened by the US naval blockade of its ports.

Both sides needed a reprieve.

The deal's priority is to extend the 8 April ceasefire in time and scope – another 60 days pledging no hostilities, lifting the US blockade in return for Iran relinquishing its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, while both sides commit to talks.

We don’t have the text yet but on the basis of how the deal was being briefed by the administration late last week it does not solve in any conclusive way the issues that apparently motivated Trump’s attack in the first place, nor those which drove Iran’s aggressive retaliation.

To get to something each side can sell as a victory, Trump needs a long-term (at least 20 years), verifiable prohibition on nuclear enrichment by Tehran.

Iran needs comprehensive sanctions relief and access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen oil revenues. Those issues and their sequencing have always been core sticking points.

While the deal may contain commitments or "understandings" to talk further about, it does not, as far as we know so far, meaningfully agree on them.

And that's before even mentioning the demands of Israel and hawkish Republicans in Washington that a final deal must also tame Iran's conventional weapons programme and the funding of its armed allies in the region.

In announcing the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, all sides are "frantically trying to spin the text to make themselves look like the victor" says Andrew Peek, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran and Iraq at the US Department of State.

Speaking to the BBC, he said he thought all sides had "something to be happy and unhappy about".

Iran will be pleased with the inclusion of Lebanon in the deal, said Peek, while the US would be happy that there was no mention of tolls for ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz.

Barbara Leaf, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, told the BBC that the "big get" of the new deal between the US and Iran is "restoring the status quo".

She accused the Trump administration of "mincing around, using a lot of wordplay to suggest that what is not going to happen, is actually going to happen", pointing to the unfreezing of Iranian assets as a key example.

Image source, Getty Images

Iran's deputy foreign minister says Qatari mediators held "nearly 14 to 15 hours of lengthy talks" in Tehran to reach an agreement on a draft memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran.

”This negotiation process took a long time," Kazem Gharibabadi told Iranian state media on Monday.

"A Qatari delegation was in Tehran yesterday to finalise discussions on the text of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States.

"Nearly 14 to 15 hours of lengthy talks took place, during which we presented the Islamic Republic of Iran’s final amendments to the text. Naturally, those amendments were accepted, and the text of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding was finalised.”

The deputy minister said talks on a final deal will happen over a 60-day period where Iran has "several issues to address" with a top priority being the lifting of all sanctions against it.

Measuring 'the deal'published at 01:56 BST

01:56 BST

Frank Gardner
Security correspondent

Anything that frees up the Strait of Hormuz is bound to be welcomed, not just by the global shipping industry and the wider world economy but by Iran too.

The Islamic Republic has been trying hard not to give Donald Trump the satisfaction of knowing how much his naval blockade of its Gulf ports is hurting, but the damage to Iran’s economy has been huge.

Yet the real measure of any "peace deal" is what has or has not been achieved after this war began on 28 February.

Because up until that date, Gulf oil, gas, fertiliser, helium and everything else was flowing unobstructed through the Strait. Any deal that restores that flow is simply undoing the damage caused by this war.

Beyond that, the real long-term test will be to see if, as the US President claims, the danger of Iran developing a nuclear weapon has really been reduced.

Or, as some fear, whether the newly emboldened hardliners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) will now secretly try to race for a bomb as their best defence against being attacked again.

As we reported earlier, Iranian state media says that one of the points included in the memorandum of understanding is the lifting of the US naval blockade within 30 days.

The US military has been blockading Iran's ports after Tehran effectively closed the busy Strait of Hormuz through which about 20% of the world's oil and gas supplies are usually transported.

Centcom says it had disabled nine vessels and redirected 135 more since since the blockade began on 13 April.

US Senator Lindsey Graham says that while he is "pleased" that a memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran has been agreed, he is "somewhat concerned" that "Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming".

In his post to X, the Republican senator said he would be watching the ensuing negotiations "closely", and looked forward to reviewing "the final product" in Congress.

Graham wrote: "Congratulations to all in getting us to this point. Time will tell."

Image source, EPA

The US president gave an interview to the New York Times on Sunday afternoon, in which he says the agreement with Iran ensures the Strait of Hormuz is "permanently toll free".

In what the paper says was a 28-minute phone call, Donald Trump also said that if Iran fails to reach a final nuclear accord with the US he would restart military attacks, or make the US "the guardian of the Middle East" in return for a fifth of the region's revenue.

He remained steadfast in his previous assertions that the decision to attack Iran in February, and his subsequent naval blockade of its ports, has "remade the Middle East in America’s favor".

It is not clear whether the president had spoken to the outlet further following the announcement of the deal between the US and Iran.

Oil prices in early trade in Asia have fallen off the back of a US-Iran deal under which the Strait of Hormuz is set to be reopened.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was 3.8% lower at $84.02 (£62.48) a barrel, while US-traded oil was down 4.1% at $81.40.

Pakistan says the agreement will be officially signed on Friday in Switzerland while US President Donald Trump has posted on social media about the deal, saying "oil will flow".

The strait had been effectively closed since shortly after the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on 28 February.

Uncertainty partially lifted but signing of deal still days awaypublished at 00:55 BST 15 June

00:55 BST 15 June

Sebastian Usher
Global affairs correspondent

For Iran's Arab Gulf neighbours, there will be a sense of relief that at least for now there could be an end to the threat of Iranian missiles targeting them - a tactic that has raised questions about the very nature of the economic model followed by the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

As for the most essential element of any deal from the US perspective, it's unclear for now how far this agreement goes in providing guarantees and mechanisms that will prevent Iran from ever developing a nuclear weapon.

That was the danger that the US and Israel said they were tackling in going to war.

There are indications from what the Iranian media has reported to be in the deal that such a mechanism may have been set up, but that will need to be clarified and is likely to be the subject of intense negotiation after the deal is signed.

That ceremony is still several days away.

With all the dramatic twists and turns that this process has taken over recent weeks, no-one can be sure that the path towards that day will be straightforward.

But for now, some of the uncertainty over the conflict – which for weeks had wavered between ceasefire and military confrontation – has at least been partially lifted.

Respite for Lebanon unclearpublished at 00:47 BST 15 June

00:47 BST 15 June

Sebastian Usher
Global affairs correspondent

Finally after what has seemed like countless false starts, a deal has been agreed by the US and Iran.

Both sides have predictably claimed victory. Donald Trump has boldly declared: "This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region." Iran's deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi hailed what he called his country's military achievements.

All sides, and mediator Pakistan, say the deal will see the lifting of Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the US blockade of Iranian ports, although this may not be immediate.

That will go some way to relieving pressure on Trump over the harm to the global economy caused by the former, while Iran's collapsing economy will gain some relief from the latter.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says the agreement also calls for the "immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon".

That could be a tall order.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown no sign so far of being prepared to end Israel's offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Indeed, twice in just the past week, Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut in response to Hezbollah rockets crossing into northern Israel have come close to derailing the whole process.

Iran only just pulled back from responding with another missile attack on Israel in order to get the deal across the line.

It's unclear if the agreement will provide a respite to Lebanon, where two recent ceasefires have failed to take hold.

Iranian state media is reporting what is says are the draft details of a 14-point memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran.

The specific points have not been officially confirmed by either country.

Mehr News Agency, a semi-official Iranian state news outlet, says the points include:

• A permanent ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon
• US commitment not to interfere with Iran's internal affairs
• Lifting of US naval blockade within 30 days
• US withdrawal of forces from Iran
• Reopening the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days "under Iranian arrangements"
• The US and its allies delivering reconstruction plans for Iran worth at least $300bn
• Ending sanctions on Iranian oil and energy products
• Reiteration of Iran's commitment not to produce nuclear weapons
• US commitment not to increase its forces in the region and not impose new sanctions

Mehr also reported that "final negotiations will not begin before half of Iran's frozen funds are released, Iran's oil sanctions are suspended, and the naval blockade is lifted".

It said the final agreement would be approved by a UN Security Council resolution.