The signing will kick off a 60-day period in which Iran and the United States will try to hammer out a full-scale peace deal.
“We want to put the nuclear discussions up front,” a US official said on the call.
But the bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz is an immediate priority due to the global economic effects from the spike in oil prices.
Vance told CNBC there was an understanding with Iran that the strait would reopen “in a toll-free way for the long term, and that’s the sort of thing that we’re going to figure out in these technical negotiations.”
Trump himself said the critical strait would be “completely open” from Friday, but added there was still “hunting” going on to ensure it was de-mined.
Shipping traffic should return to pre-war levels “over the next couple of weeks,” but there had already been a “substantial increase in traffic,” the first US official said.
However, Iran’s foreign ministry said Monday that the deal would allow it to charge maritime service fees on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, rather than imposing “tolls.”
