[Rachel Abrams]: After days of promising that a ceasefire was near, President Trump late Sunday announced that he had reached a deal with Iran. Today, David Sanger, who spoke to the president, explains what is and does not included in the agreement and how much closer it gets both sides to ending the war for good. It's Monday, June 15th. David Sanger, thank you so much for joining us.

[David Sanger]: Rachel, great to be with you.

[Rachel Abrams]: It is 8:00 p.m. in New York. It's after 1:00 a.m. in London where you are right now. So, thank you for making the time. Tell us what you know about this very late breaking deal with Iran.

[David Sanger]: Well, Rachel, as you know, this deal has been brewing for a long time and it's been subject to a lot of up-and-down negotiations between Iran and the United States even as the war went from active combat to a ceasefire to that flare-up that we saw just in the past week when the US resumed bombing of Iran for several days. And we thought for a while that that might kill any hope of having what they just agreed to on Sunday night, which is a preliminary memorandum of understanding. That's really all they've done here. An agreement to reopen the straight, to end the blockade of Iran, and to begin a serious conversation about the nuclear program. And in the end, the United States and the Iranians all determined it was in their interest to do that, to end the fighting and get back to the talking.

[Rachel Abrams]: And David, you actually spoke with the president. Tell us about that conversation.

[David Sanger]: I did, Rachel. It was a little bit of an unexpected call. I'm here in London, as you said, and around 4:30 in Washington, about 9:30 here, the president called to talk about the deal that he put together and to celebrate it, to argue that it was much better than what President Obama had negotiated in 2015, a negotiation that I followed closely at the time.

[Rachel Abrams]: A deal that the president ripped up in his first term, we should remind listeners.

[David Sanger]: Ripped up in his first term, criticized harshly, and has criticized again even on Sunday because he's very sensitive about the argument that some Democrats have made, and many nuclear experts have made, that he hasn't gotten as much yet from the Iranians as President Obama did. And of course, President Obama did not resort to war. So, the call was mostly to make the argument that he'd gotten something big here, something that had remade the Middle East, and something that will make the entire region and Israel safe from an Iranian bomb in the future.

[Rachel Abrams]: I should note, David, that one of the reasons this call, at least the surprising to me a little bit, was that it was not that long ago that you were on Air Force One, and the president said that your reporting on the war was treasonous.

[David Sanger]: Yeah, well, Rachel, what can I tell you? It's a hazard of White House reporting. He would reacted badly to a series of news analyses that made the point that he had not yet accomplished his political objectives, you know, including ending the Iranian nuclear program. And he still hasn't. But he wanted to try to make the case, cuz I think he cares about what the Times reports, that he was on the road to something that he believes will be better than the Obama deal. It'll be a while before we know whether that's the case.

[Rachel Abrams]: I think another takeaway from the fact that he called you despite how angry he was with you quite recently is that this deal really matters to him. We have talked on the show about how much the president has been looking for an off-ramp to this war. And I just sort of wonder given all of that if you can tell us a little bit about what his mood was like. Did he seem, I don't know, victorious at all?

[David Sanger]: He sounded celebratory, and he clearly thinks that he has found his off-ramp. Now, let's remember, Rachel, that when he went into this war, the Strait of Hormuz was open.

[Rachel Abrams]: Mhm.

[David Sanger]: And it was running toll-free. One of the things he wanted to tell me was that he believes under this agreement Iran will never impose tolls again. Of course, the agreement itself, we believe, we haven't seen the text of it, only refers to suspending tolls for the next 60 days. He also told me that he was convinced that Iran would comply and reach the next stage agreement on the nuclear accord and talked about specific provisions, but we have to remember, he hasn't negotiated any of those positions yet with the Iranians. And he said that if Iran didn't complete that deal, he would either resume military action or begin to have the United States patrol the Gulf in return for 20% of all the revenues, presumably mostly oil revenues, that are received in the region. Well, that's a very different use of American power in the Middle East. It's also very Trumpian, right? So, he was trying to make the case that the United States was not only recovering, not only had the blockade worked and the bombing worked, but that he was on the way to remaking the region.

[Rachel Abrams]: Right. To your point, the threat of demanding 20% of a country or region's revenue seems like a very difficult thing to calculate, let alone enforce. But, just to summarize, the points that he did say to you seem to be things that we've heard for a while. He is reopening the Strait of Hormuz, there will be no tolls, there will be a 60-day ceasefire, this lifting of the blockade on Iranian ports. Have we heard from the Iranians in all of this? Like, what is the status of actually signing on the dotted line for all of the parties involved?

[David Sanger]: As of the moment when we're speaking, neither party has talked about actually signing this agreement, although we're told that there will be, if there hasn't already been an electronic signing, think a DocuSign for an international agreement. And then, on Friday, in Switzerland, a more formal signing that presumably will include Vice President J.D. Vance. And that would probably be the beginning of the negotiations for the next phase.

[Rachel Abrams]: Mhm.

[David Sanger]: But, what was unusual about the president's call is that as he described and walked me through the nuclear agreements that he believed they were going to reach, many of which we've already written about in the past few days, he was basically describing agreements that he wanted to make sound as if they had already been reached. But, when pressed, acknowledged that this is all subject to this later and in my view, much more important document, which would be much more like what the Obama administration negotiated 11 years ago. Specifics about whether or not Iran can enrich uranium, whether it has to give up its stockpile of nuclear fuel, and so forth.

[Rachel Abrams]: Okay, David, so a lot of unknowns as you're explaining to us. Was there anything else that struck you about the call or the deal or anything else?

[David Sanger]: Well, one of the things that I thought was surprising about the conversation was that the president went out of his way to praise two authoritarian leaders who we didn't think had a whole lot to do with this final deal, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China. And he praised them for essentially not getting involved. He was mildly critical of the Europeans for offering to help only after the fighting ended. And he was deeply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who went to extraordinary lengths to try to keep this agreement from coming together.

[Rachel Abrams]: David, we've talked a lot on the show about how even though the United States and Israel started this war together, their interests have pretty quickly diverged. We've seen that play out in the negotiations in recent days. We've seen that play out during the course of the war. Can you tell us a little bit more specifically about how Prime Minister Netanyahu has been a stumbling block to this deal that we saw announced on Sunday.

[David Sanger]: Well, Rachel, when the history of this war is written, the dynamic between the United States and Israel is going to be one of the most fascinating chapters. You'll remember that it was Prime Minister Netanyahu who made the case that if the US and Israel attacked Iran together, the country was so fragile that the government would probably collapse in about 3 days, and that it would be taken over by forces that Israel and the United States would be able to control.

[Rachel Abrams]: Mhm.

[David Sanger]: And it was at that time that the president said to some of my Times colleagues in other conversations, "This is going to be like Venezuela." And the only peace deal that he would be interested in, he said toward the beginning of the war, was an unconditional surrender by Iran. But as the war got more and more complicated, and as the president needed a way out of a conflict in which there was going to be no quick victory, and certainly no unconditional surrender, he and Netanyahu began to separate. And they separated in large part over Netanyahu's insistence that he continue the attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Because the Iranians began to make the case that the only ceasefire that they would sign would be a whole regional one that would also call off Israel's ability to attack Hezbollah.

[Rachel Abrams]: Mhm.

[David Sanger]: Now, if you ask American officials around the president, that didn't mean that Israel couldn't defend itself if attacked by Hezbollah. But the splits you've seen in the past few weeks have all been over Netanyahu's insistence that he was going to finish the job and crush Hezbollah in Lebanon.

[Rachel Abrams]: Right. Israel does not want to be forced into an agreement that prohibits them from attacking what they see as an existential threat.

[David Sanger]: That's absolutely right. And so, they did not want to agree to any kind of accord that would put limits on their own military activity or even their ability to strike Iran at some point in the future. This agreement is supposed to be a regional agreement and includes a commitment that the US would not re-attack Iran and presumably that its allies would not as well. So, this turned into some screaming fights between Netanyahu and Trump, details of which began to leak out. And the conversations didn't get any easier and the president told me he had really hard conversations with Netanyahu in the past 48 hours after Israel attacked Beirut and other parts of Lebanon.

[Rachel Abrams]: David, did President Trump tell you what argument he is using to push Netanyahu to fall in line?

[David Sanger]: Well, first, he told me that Netanyahu was a very difficult guy, even while making the case that the president's a long-time supporter of Israel. But, the president cast himself as the one who had Israel's long-term interests in mind more than Netanyahu did. He said, "To me, to be honest with you, he should be very thankful for us for doing this because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn't be around for 2 hours."

[Rachel Abrams]: Did the president tell you why he thinks that this time will be different? Like, why Netanyahu will listen to him and not continue attacks against Iran and its proxies?

[David Sanger]: He didn't. And the Israelis have made it pretty clear that they're not going to be bound to an agreement to which they weren't a party. They weren't involved in the negotiations, and yet the Iranians are making the case that this agreement applies not only to the United States, but to all of its allies.

[Rachel Abrams]: Mhm.

[David Sanger]: But, at the end of the day, Israel's ultimate guarantor of security is the United States. And its ultimate supplier of arms is the United States. And while the president has never threatened either one of those, you can imagine that amidst what we are told are cursing matches between these two pretty strong-willed leaders, is the underlying threat that if Israel doesn't go along, the United States' commitment may in some ways weaken. And we know that the president in recent weeks has basically made the case to Netanyahu that he's lost a generation of Americans whose views of Israel are nowhere near what they were in President Trump's generation.

[Rachel Abrams]: That is really interesting, and I feel like I should pause here because I want to remind people that this is, at the end of the day, not a formal peace deal, right? Everything we're talking about is a memorandum of understanding. So, it's essentially an agreement to engage in further talks. And I wonder, David, you are a White House correspondent, you are a national security expert. So, given all of what you have seen so far on this war, how durable do you think this agreement actually is?

[David Sanger]: You know, I think this is as durable as each side ultimately decides to make it. The fact of the matter is that a memorandum of understanding doesn't have any particular enforceable capability. This isn't a peace deal, as you said. It's not a nuclear deal. It's more like a table of contents, as one of the president's aides put it to me, for what needs to be negotiated next. Now, it does have a couple of more specific limitations. For example, it says in the memorandum of understanding that Iran is going to have to rid itself of its nuclear stockpile and begin to blend that down to a form that can't be used in nuclear weapons. But, it's a long way from that general statement to saying who's going to dig this out from under the rubble in Iran, who's going to go melt it down, and who's going to have possession of the nuclear material later on. So, it's not really an enforceable document. And it's very possible that the Iranians think this is all they need to get through 2 and 1/2 more years of the Trump administration. And that they'll worry about the next steps, which will be lengthy and difficult to execute, when they see who's the next president.

[Rachel Abrams]: David, you have made the points to us before on this show that the demands from the White House about what they want in order to reach a ceasefire have shifted, or what their goals are for this war have shifted, such that what we might actually see if this war ended is simply a return to the status quo before it began. Now that you've spoken to the president, and given what you know about what might be included in this deal, I just want to ask you, has your assessment shifted?

[David Sanger]: It hasn't shifted much, Rachel. In the course of more than 4 months of war, we certainly have seen the United States succeed at destroying a good deal of Iran's missile capability. Not all of it, but a good deal. It has indeed sunk the Iranian navy. There wasn't much of one, but it's gone. It has certainly wiped out what was left of the Iranian Air Force. But this agreement largely gets us back to where we were before the war started, which is to say with the Strait of Hormuz open, assuming it happens as the president describes and expects, without a blockade of Iranian ports, and with a negotiation over the nuclear program resuming in Switzerland. Now, it does raise one interesting question though, Rachel. While the president said to me that he wants to make sure the nuclear material that's in Iran gets dug up from beneath the rubble of the facilities that were attacked a year ago by the US Air Force, he didn't sound like he was in a huge rush. And he thought that the United States could keep an eye on it, that from satellites and from other means, we can make sure the Iranians don't use it to produce a weapon. But if we don't have an urgent reason to get it out, it does raise the question, why did this war happen to begin with? Because the overarching justification for the war at the time was that Iran was just weeks or months away from being able to build a weapon. In other words, did we need to have these three months of violence and incredible disruption? Or was there another way to get to where we find ourselves today?

[Rachel Abrams]: David Sanger, thank you so much.

[David Sanger]: Thanks, Rachel. Great to be with you.

[Rachel Abrams]: We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. For the first time in 53 years, the New York Knickerbockers won the NBA championship, beating the San Antonio Spurs in game five of the finals on Saturday night. The Knicks won the series four to one after trailing by double digits in each of their victories, twice mounting seemingly impossible comebacks. They were led by the incomparable Jalen Brunson, a 6-foot-2 guard who overcame and outplayed the tallest man in basketball, Victor Wembanyama, to give New York the title and to bring raucous, ebullient joy to a city where many people had lost hope of seeing this particular hometown victory in their lifetime. Today's episode was produced by Mooj Zadie, Alex Stern, and Adrian Ma. It was edited by Michael Benoist and Patricia Willens. Contains music by Alicia B YouTube and Dan Powell. Our theme music is by Wonderly and this episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.