President Donald Trump defended the interim peace deal he’s reached with Iran and said it could get signed as soon as Thursday, amid pushback from Republicans who object to the deal and the billions of dollars set to flow Tehran’s way.

The so-called memorandum of understanding could be signed “shortly, tomorrow, maybe the next day,” Trump said Wednesday at a news conference in France, where he attended a summit of the Group of Seven advanced economies.

Under a draft seen by Bloomberg and a version read to reporters by a senior U.S. official on Wednesday, the Strait of Hormuz would rapidly be reopened, after a months-long closure that sent global energy prices soaring. The text also envisions immediate sanctions waivers for Iranian oil. Talks on nuclear issues, and potential further financial gains for Iran, will follow.

With Gulf energy supplies dwindling during the three-month conflict, and economic strains building around the world, Trump signaled the risk of a major economic crisis played a key role in his decision to call off the war he started in February.

He said military escalation “could have caused an international depression” and cited the U.S. leader on whose watch the Great Depression of the 1930s began. “The one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover,” Trump said.

Trump also defended aspects of the preliminary deal that have drawn criticism among some of his Republican allies in Washington. That includes the exclusion from the deal of Iran’s ballistic missile program, which was cited by Israeli officials and his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio as justifications for the war.

On Wednesday, Trump said the missiles will be discussed along with Iran’s nuclear program during subsequent talks, though Iran will “have to have some because other people have some.” Rubio has previously argued that Iran’s missiles and drones could create a shield for Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Trump also defended the $300 billion development program for Iran that’s envisaged in the MOU, reiterating that there’ll be no U.S. government cash in it, and Iran will only get to benefit if it “behaves.” He added U.S. forces would hit Iran again if its leaders didn’t adhere to the deal.

But Trump did signal that he’s ready to release the billions in Iranian assets frozen over the years by the U.S., something he’s ruled out in the past — arguing now that it’ll be bad for the dollar if he doesn’t. “At a certain point in time I guess we’ll have to give it back,” he said. “If we didn’t give it back, nobody would ever invest in the dollar again.”

The preliminary accord has brought relief to world energy markets, with Brent crude plunging below $80 a barrel this week, though it pared the decline slightly on Wednesday.

At the same time, the MOU will leave most of the thorniest disputes — such as the one over Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium — to a 60-day period of future talks. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters in France he didn’t see 60 days as a “hard” deadline “just as long as they’re behaving.”

Those negotiations will likely be tense as Trump comes under increasing pressure from GOP allies who say he’s conceding too much and have argued U.S. forces should “finish the job.”

“Iran is on its back heel right now, weaker than it’s ever been before,” Mike Pence, Trump’s first term vice president, told Bloomberg Government. “My concerns about the MOU, now that we’ve seen it, have to do with the fact that there’s no mention of verifiably dismantling the nuclear weapons program. It only reiterates the same promise that Iran has made in years past about not having a nuclear program.”

The deal presents political risks for Trump, who had claimed for years that a 2015 accord negotiated with Iran during President Barack Obama’s administration was the “worst deal in history” and amounted to a massive financial giveaway to Tehran. Trump scrapped that agreement in 2018 and promised something far better.

But as more details emerged about the scope of the deal, some traditional GOP members were harshly critical, suggesting the war against Iran wasn’t worth it.

“Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal,” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana wrote on social media.

“Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive,” he added. “Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped. This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Other Republicans urged additional pressure on Iran. “We should tighten the thumbscrews if we want to get the sort of concessions required to secure or remove the nuclear material,” Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana said on Wednesday.

The MOU is scheduled to be formally signed by U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in the Swiss town of Bürgenstock, a mountain resort overlooking Lake Lucerne.

Trump joked about Vance’s role, when asked by a reporter in France why he wouldn’t attend the signing. “This way if it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” he said. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

Neither Washington nor Tehran has yet officially released the document, though Trump said he’ll soon do so.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the war by bombing Iran on Feb. 28, arguing it was necessary to stop the Islamic Republic building a nuclear weapon.

But the war has fallen short of its initial aims. While their forces battered Iran’s military and economy, the Islamic Republic is still standing, despite Trump saying Iranians would be able to “take over” their government.

Tehran has also shown it can still menace the region with drones and missiles and put pressure on the White House to strike a deal by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring and hurting the global economy. The rise in prices in the U.S. hit the standing of Trump and his Republican Party ahead of November’s midterm elections.

At its core, the interim deal “trades the reopening of the Strait Hormuz for economic relief,” said Bloomberg Economics analysts including Dina Esfandiary and Ziad Daoud. “But the exchange is uneven: Tehran’s gains will be plenty and new. Washington will just recover some benefits that existed before the war began in February.”

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(With assistance from Caitlin Reilly, Aidan Williams, Eltaf Najafizada, Arsalan Shahla and Mike Dorning.)

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