CIA Director John Ratcliffe told President Trump and other senior officials that U.S. intelligence has raised serious doubts about whether Iran is willing to make the nuclear concessions Washington is seeking in any final agreement, according to three sources familiar with those discussions, Axios reported Monday.

The warning, first reported by Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, surfaced during a run of high-level meetings between Trump and his advisers in the days before the administration announced a memorandum of understanding with Tehran. In those sessions, officials reviewed intelligence collected by several U.S. agencies indicating that the way Iranian officials were discussing the deal privately did not match what they were telling American negotiators and the mediators. Ratcliffe said that based on that intelligence, they doubted the Iranians would take the nuclear steps the U.S. was seeking.

Ratcliffe was not alone in his reservations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both raised concerns about the deal in internal discussions, while Vice President JD Vance and envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner argued in favor of it, two of the sources said. The split places the country’s top intelligence official and its chief diplomat on the skeptical side of an agreement the president has publicly championed.

A White House official, responding to the report, said Trump weighs all views but remains the final decision-maker, and defended the framework as meeting the administration’s longstanding redlines: that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon, cannot keep its highly enriched uranium, and cannot hold global energy supplies hostage. The official said Trump would only sign a final agreement he judged to be a good one. The CIA and State Department declined to comment, and the Pentagon did not respond.

The dispute matters because the nuclear core of the deal remains unsettled. The MOU signed Sunday launches a 60-day negotiating window, extendable by mutual consent, during which the parties are to work out a more detailed nuclear agreement. Under the initial text, Iran reaffirms its standing pledge never to acquire a nuclear weapon and agrees to freeze its program in place while talks continue; in exchange, the U.S. holds off on new sanctions and additional troop deployments. The thornier questions, the disposition of Iran’s stockpiled enriched uranium and the future of enrichment on Iranian soil, are deferred to the final round. If that deal is reached, the U.S. would pull the forces it mobilized for the war within 30 days and lift sanctions on an agreed schedule.

Skeptics inside the administration argue that the sequencing favors Tehran. They contend Iran is unlikely to sign a nuclear deal on American terms and will pocket the benefits of the interim arrangement in the meantime. Two senior officials pushed back in a Monday briefing, insisting that Iran’s gains are tied to concrete steps, and one said the U.S. would know within two to three weeks whether Tehran is serious, at which point the process could halt with Iran having gained little. On Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham told Axios he was concerned that Iran’s reading of the agreement appears to differ from what the U.S. negotiating team is describing, and pressed for the text to be released.

The non-nuclear provisions move faster. The MOU calls for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen in the near term, with Iran committing to use its best efforts to allow commercial vessels safe passage at no charge for 60 days while the U.S. lifts its naval blockade within 30. Iran is to open a dialogue with Oman, joined by other Gulf states, on the strait’s future administration, though Iranian state media has floated the prospect of transit fees once the initial period lapses. The release of Iran’s frozen assets is governed by ambiguous language and a “pay for performance” model, and any final deal is to include a plan for a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran.

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