This is not the first time that the Swiss resort of Bürgenstock is playing host to history-makers. For decades, the mountain hideaway has welcomed rock stars, world leaders, and has even been the site of the signing of a past peace accord.
Bergenstock was preparing to host a formal signing ceremony for the US-Iran memorandum of understanding on Friday – but at the last minute, the plan was changed to closed-door technical talks, which were in doubt as of late Thursday. US Vice President JD Vance told reporters he still planned to visit Switzerland but warned: “This could change.”
It was all pretty much in line with a tumultuous week of will-they-won’t-they diplomacy and big claims from both sides. After conflicting statements on whether, where and by whom the agreement would be physically signed, Trump surprised reporters by signing the text himself during a gala dinner in Versailles on Wednesday evening – earlier than expected, while Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian signed in Tehran.
The freeze comes after months of missile and drone attacks across the Middle East, which followed the US and Israeli attacks on Iran in February. But this is only the beginning of the story – and the question looming over the Swiss mountain talks is what kind of history they will actually make.
Trump: ‘They don’t want bombings’
We sat in on Trump’s G7 press conference on Wednesday, as he touted the benefits of his new framework agreement with Iran.
In an hour-long greatest hits montage of the past few days’ controversial lines, Trump praised Tehran’s new leadership, claimed they had achieved regime change and prevented “nuclear holocaust”, and repeated his threat to “bomb” Iran if a comprehensive agreement was not reached.
When asked what made him so confident that Iran would not impose tolls in the Strait of Hormuz as stated in the framework text, he replied “Common sense. They don’t want to be bombed.”
‘a sigh of relief’
G7 leaders strongly supported Trump on Wednesday. French President Macron was firm in his assessment that the agreement was a “wise” move, and offered to deploy a Franco-British mission to the Strait to assist with implementation – which Trump immediately shrugged off.
Rowena binti Abdul Razak, a London-based lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, agrees that the announcement is a “good step”.
“This is the beginning of a hopefully long-term peace agreement between the US and Iran. It will certainly defuse many of the tensions rising in the region and outside the region,” he told DW.
“The energy crisis doesn’t just affect governments. It also affects common people. So, I think everyone, at least for now, will be breathing a sigh of relief.”
But Macron chose other words carefully that signaled his concern about the long-term prospects of the agreement. “Does this solve everything? No. Are there risks? Yes,” he told reporters.
memorandum of doubt
Some people are claiming that the agreement will solve everything.
Treaties vs. memoranda, statements vs. non-papers, conclusions vs. the specifics of communiqués – these debates are usually reserved for the diplomats themselves and the political nerds like me who follow their work.
But the crux of the matter is this: there is no deal yet. There is an interim agreement to end the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which are problems caused by the war rather than the pre-conflict status quo.
“The US administration could have got a much better deal than this, but at the same time, there was a desire to open the Strait of Hormuz,” Miyan Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told DW. The influential think tank is known for its hard-line stance on Iran and supports military attacks on the country.
Malecki said the impending midterm elections mean U.S. officials are dealing with a ticking “political clock.”
Trump says Iran deal ‘builds a wall’
Trump has claimed that the core of their agreement is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. It’s a promise Iran has made many times before, most notably in the previous Iran nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – negotiated under the administration of President Barack Obama and brokered by the European Union.
Trump was a fierce critic of that agreement and withdrew from it in 2018.
He said on Wednesday, “The Obama agreement was a path to nuclear weapons. And, let’s call it the Trump agreement, there is a wall to nuclear weapons. No one can get through it. We have built a wall.”
But whether he can achieve much more than the nuclear-sanctions-in-exchange-sanctions-relief model in Obama’s JCPOA is less certain.
Trump himself warned in 2020 that Iran “has never won the war but has never lost the negotiation.”
“What Iran says it will do and what it won’t do is irrelevant. What’s important is that they accept that level of verification,” Alan Eyre, a fellow at the Middle East Institute and former US JCPOA negotiator, told DW.
“If President Trump and his allies can negotiate this, I would be able to compare the Trump nuclear deal to the JCPOA,” he said.
there’s a tough road ahead
Negotiators are now expected to begin sharing those details in Switzerland over the weekend, as the country continues to serve as a peacekeeping hub. The historic Bürgenstock resort overlooking Lake Lucerne also hosted the Ukraine peace summit in 2024, and Sudanese negotiators reached a deal there in 2002.
It’s worth noting that the war in Ukraine continues two years after that summit, and the Sudan deal now seems bittersweet given the civil war in that country and the humanitarian crisis in neighboring South Sudan. Establishing lasting peace is no easy feat.
The expected 60 days for initial US-Iran talks is clearly a moving target – and the region may remain in “interim deal” mode for some time.
Eyre warned that no agreement “worth doing” would be reached in 60 days. He said, “Getting any kind of deal will require serious and sustained negotiations by technical experts, and I have serious doubts about whether this current US administration is willing and able to engage in that.”
DW’s Brent Goff and Alex Forrest Whiting contributed reporting.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn