A senior U.S. official provided NBC News on Wednesday with the text of the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, a 14-point agreement that had been kept from release until now. The U.S. hoped to officially get the text out Wednesday night, making the document itself the day’s main development.
That matters because the text had not been public when the memorandum was signed Sunday. It was originally held back at Iran’s request, then released only after the U.S. began coordinating the publication with Iran, turning a private diplomatic document into the latest public marker of the Iran nuclear deal.
For readers following the Iran nuclear deal, the immediate question is not whether the text exists, but what those 14 points actually say. Abigail Williams, a producer and reporter for NBC News covering the State Department, was among the journalists connected to the release, underscoring how closely the document was being handled inside the U.S. government before it reached the public.
The sequence also points to the unusual shape of the disclosure. A text withheld once at Iran’s request was being readied for release by the United States on Wednesday night, which suggests both sides still wanted control over how the agreement entered the public record. That kind of staged release usually means the written terms matter almost as much as the signing itself.
What comes next is the publication of the text itself, and that is where the scrutiny will land. Once the 14-point agreement is out, the focus will shift from the fact of a deal to the details inside it, and whether the written terms match the political weight now attached to the Iran nuclear deal.
