Trump Tells US Negotiators 'Not to Rush' Iran Deal as Timeline Slips

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told US negotiators “not to rush” into a final agreement with Iran, the BBC reported Sunday evening, hours after his administration’s weekend rollout of a 60-day ceasefire framework that markets and capitals had read as a sprint to a signed deal this week.

The instruction, delivered as the US team continued working through outstanding text with Iranian counterparts, lands as direct presidential pushback against the timeline his own framework implied. It also lands after — not before — Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each publicly signaled resistance to the leaked terms over the course of Sunday.

MarketWatch reported Trump’s framing of the talks as “constructive” alongside the explicit “no rush” language, with the president telling reporters the Strait of Hormuz blockade would remain in place until a final agreement was reached. Taken together, the language pulls the Sunday-evening announcement off the calendar as a fixed event and reopens it as a moving target.

The framework, as announced

The framework Trump unveiled over the weekend — covered in America Strikes’s Sunday morning rollout preview — set out three load-bearing components: a 60-day ceasefire extension, a phased release of frozen Iranian assets tied to International Atomic Energy Agency verification milestones, and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial transit without tolls.

The Hormuz transit terms, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s demand that traffic resume without insurance premiums above the 5% benchmark, were detailed in Rubio’s morning briefing readout. Tehran had earlier signaled a preliminary willingness to reopen the strait, with a US official telling Middle East Monitor the two sides had reached a preliminary deal on the transit question — though the same official cautioned that the broader ceasefire-and-assets package remained open.

That preliminary Hormuz agreement is the one component of the framework that appears to be holding. The other two — the ceasefire mechanics and the asset-release schedule — are the ones the Sunday pushback hit hardest.

Why “not to rush” matters now

The sequencing is the story. Trump’s instruction did not come at the start of the Sunday cycle, when the framework was being introduced; it came after a daylong sequence of opposition from constituencies the administration would normally count as allies.

A bloc of pro-Israel Senate Republicans publicly called the draft a “disastrous mistake,” and Senate Democrats described the leaked terms as “worse than before” the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as America Strikes covered in the bipartisan Senate pushback dispatch earlier Sunday. The Democratic critique, detailed by Middle East Eye, focused on the absence of restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and on the sunset structure governing the deal’s core constraints.

Netanyahu, in parallel, endorsed the diplomatic effort but conditioned Israeli support on the dismantlement of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure at Natanz and Fordow — a condition the leaked text does not satisfy, as covered in the Israel pushback dispatch. Tehran itself had publicly rejected the broader contours of the framework earlier in the week, as captured in the Friday readout on the “largely negotiated” formulation.

“Not to rush,” delivered into that environment, is consistent with two readings. The first is that the White House is buying time to negotiate text changes that can hold Senate Republican votes without losing Tehran. The second is that the administration is buying time to harden the framework against Netanyahu’s enrichment objection. Neither reading is consistent with a signed deliverable this week.

Israeli posture: strikes continue regardless

Any ceasefire framework’s effective reach is constrained by what Israel does in parallel. Middle East Eye reported Sunday that Israeli officials made clear strikes against Iranian and Iran-aligned targets across the region would continue regardless of progress on the US-Iran framework — a posture that limits any 60-day ceasefire to the bilateral US-Iran dimension and leaves the wider regional kinetic environment unaddressed.

The practical implication is that even a signed US-Iran ceasefire would not, on its own, halt Israeli operations against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, Houthi targets in Yemen, or Iranian-linked infrastructure in Syria and Iraq. Tehran’s calculation on whether to absorb continued Israeli activity inside the framework — or to treat it as a breach justifying retaliation — becomes the open variable.

Markets: the Tuesday open is the read

US markets are closed Monday for Memorial Day. The first chance for cash to vote on the slow-walk language will come at Tuesday’s open. The MarketWatch framing of the talks as “appears close” captured the direction the tape had been trending — toward de-risking on a diplomatic outcome. The “not to rush” language reintroduces tail risk into that trajectory.

The preliminary Hormuz transit deal, if it holds independent of the broader framework, would be the partial offset — a reopened strait, even without a signed ceasefire, removes the most direct supply shock from the price.

What to watch in the next 48 hours

Three signals will define whether the framework survives Sunday’s pushback or has to be substantively reopened.

First, whether the administration releases any updated text or readout language addressing the enrichment dismantlement question — the load-bearing concession that would move Netanyahu and the pro-Israel Senate Republican bloc.

Second, whether Iranian officials publicly endorse or distance themselves from the preliminary Hormuz transit agreement separately from the broader framework. A standalone Hormuz deal is a meaningfully different deliverable from a comprehensive ceasefire-and-assets package.

Third, whether Senate leadership in either party moves toward invoking the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act’s 30-day review window, which would impose a procedural floor under the timeline regardless of what the White House chooses to announce.

The Sunday-evening announcement is no longer the binding event. The week ahead is.