President Donald Trump's signing of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding at the Palace of Versailles in France was “history in the making”, the French Minister of the Economy said on Thursday, revealing details of how it unfolded.
"I was in Versailles last night. And I can tell you, [US Secretary of State] Marco Rubio went out of the room to get the document... printed on French paper with a French printing machine, and [President] Donald Trump took out his pen, that we all know... We cleared the table, we took the memorandum, and he signed it in English and in Farsi," Minister Roland Lescure said.
"We all felt this is history in the making. This is the beginning of a process that's going to be long. This is the beginning of a process that's going to have its ups and downs. But this is a ray of hope after a few difficult weeks," he added.
The interim agreement is aimed at ending more than 100 days of a war that engulfed the Middle East and rattled global markets. It sets out a 60-day framework for a broader settlement, in a deal that immediately halts hostilities and opens the Strait of Hormuz to shipping.
Mr Lescure was speaking at the fourth annual Vision Golfe event in Paris on Thursday.
He said the MoU raises two important points, "the least of which not being the fact that Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon".
"This is a very important part of the agreement that will hopefully bring more stability in the region," said Mr Lescure. "But as a minister of finance, of course, the most important part for me is that the Strait of Hormuz will be open," he added at the French-GCC business forum.
"It's already flowing, slowly but surely. But after a few days, we're going to have a full, operating Strait of Hormuz," he continued, describing it as a "breath of fresh air".
Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which normally accounts for 25 per cent of global shipping, brought traffic in the strategic waterway to a near halt. Only a few ships have been crossing each day compared to more than 100 before the conflict broke out on February 28.
A day after the signing, former armed forces and veterans minister Jean-Yves Le Drian welcomed the agreement, saying it was a "major step forward".
The 14-point agreement sets out a broad ceasefire across several fronts, including Lebanon, where at least 3,800 people have been killed and more than one million have been forcibly displaced since March 2, according to Lebanese authorities.
“The first clause of the deal ensuring Lebanon's sovereignty is an important breakthrough,” Mr Le Drian said. "We need to ensure that conversations in Washington bring an end to this war... it is not Lebanon's war," he added.
The spillover of the Iran war into Lebanon and the wider region was one of several consequences of the conflict that were unaccounted for at the start of the war.
Mr Le Drian, who is also special envoy to Lebanon, said the US-Israeli joint attacks on Tehran resulted in an impact far "from what was expected".
The attacks "certainly weakened Iran's regime, but did not prevent it from being resilient," he said at the Paris conference.
The special envoy also said that the sixty-day timeframe under the MoU for negotiations towards a long-term deal was "not enough".
The 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, which President Trump withdrew from to secure "a better deal", took almost two years to finalise.
But Mr Le Drian said the negotiations were "important" and "essential", and should include Iran's nuclear programme, its ballistic missiles and its proxies in the Middle East.
"They're now negotiating on the Strait of Hormuz, even though the war started to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and that's not a question now," said Mr Le Drian. "The talks are positive, and they need to focus on all topics," he continued, adding, "The crisis will be behind us".
His main takeaway from the war, he said, was that "peace through strength doesn't work".
"The only thing that works is peace through negotiations and dialogue," he added.
