Negotiators meeting under Swiss and Omani mediation in Geneva produced a tentative roadmap on Monday for the phased lifting of sanctions on Iran, tied step-by-step to verified compliance with a renewed inspections regime, in what diplomats called the most concrete diplomatic gain of the two-week-old post-war phase and a critical test of whether the Islamabad ceasefire can be converted into a durable settlement.

The draft, circulated late Monday to capitals in Washington, Brussels, Tehran, Riyadh and Tel Aviv, would unwind a tightly defined set of secondary sanctions on Iranian petroleum exports, banking and aviation insurance over an eighteen-month period in four tranches, each conditioned on benchmarks verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations monitoring mission authorized by Resolution 2741 on Sunday. It does not lift primary U.S. sanctions, does not unfreeze military-related assets, and leaves open the question of pre-2018 nuclear-deal commitments that the parties had argued over for nearly a decade.

Hours before the Geneva text was finalized, Iranian state television announced that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi had concluded a separate agreement covering the agency’s return to four nuclear sites that were not struck during the war, including the Natanz fuel enrichment plant and the Tehran Research Reactor. Under that accord, IAEA inspectors will resume continuous monitoring in the first week of May, with extended access at two sites and reinstalled cameras at all four. The agreement does not cover the partially destroyed Fordow and Arak facilities, which remain the subject of a parallel technical working group.

“For the first time since the war began, we have a document that the parties can actually take home and defend in their capitals,” said Khemaies Jhinaoui, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy for the post-war phase, who briefed reporters at the Palais des Nations on Monday evening. “That does not mean a settlement. It means the conversation has moved off the question of whether and onto the question of how.”

The Geneva talks, which opened April 21 in a converted conference suite at the Hotel Intercontinental, have been chaired by Swiss state secretary Alexandre Fasel and his Omani counterpart, Sayyid Badr al-Busaidi, with European Union and Gulf Cooperation Council representatives in attendance. The United States and Iran have not met directly in the chamber; their positions have been carried by the mediators in shuttle sessions that diplomats said had stretched as long as fourteen hours on three separate days last week.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Brussels after a working dinner with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, said the draft was “a serious document” and represented “what is achievable under current conditions,” though he cautioned that any agreement remained subject to congressional consultation and would not be presented to lawmakers until after the May 6 reconstruction conference in Marseille. Rubio said the administration had insisted on the staged structure precisely to preserve leverage. “Nothing is unwound that cannot be re-imposed if Tehran walks away from its obligations,” he said.

In Tehran, Araghchi told reporters the framework was “a beginning, not a destination,” and said the Iranian government would present the document to the Supreme National Security Council on Tuesday and to the Majlis later in the week. Araghchi did not commit to a public timetable but said the leadership expected to respond formally within seven to ten days. He pointedly thanked Switzerland, Oman, Qatar and Pakistan, and made no mention of the United States or Israel.

The talks have unfolded against a backdrop of mounting domestic strain in Iran, where mass demonstrations on Sunday in Tehran and four provincial capitals demanded relief from blackouts, rationing and a currency that has lost nearly 90 percent of its value against the dollar since February. Iranian officials have privately told mediators that any sanctions framework which fails to deliver visible economic improvement within ninety days will face serious resistance from a public that has run out of patience, according to two European diplomats familiar with the discussions.

“The protests are part of the negotiating environment now, whether the parties say so or not,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center. “The Iranians need to bring something home. The Americans need to be able to argue they didn’t give away the store. The mediators have built a structure that lets both sides do that, but only if neither one overplays the early tranches.”

The first tranche, which under the draft would take effect within thirty days of signature, covers the resumption of aviation insurance for Iranian commercial carriers, the unfreezing of approximately $3.4 billion in Iranian assets held in South Korean and Japanese banks, and a narrow waiver allowing humanitarian transactions through a clearing mechanism that the Swiss government would administer. The second tranche, contingent on three months of clean IAEA reports, would permit a limited resumption of crude exports to a defined set of Asian buyers under a price cap that European officials said had been the subject of “considerable” disagreement with Washington until the final hours of the round.

Israeli officials, briefed on the framework but not party to its negotiation, offered a measured public reaction. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement issued Monday night, said Israel would evaluate the document “on the basis of what it does, not what it promises,” and reiterated that no agreement could be allowed to permit “the reconstitution of the Iranian threat” against Israeli or regional security. A senior Israeli diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the IAEA-Iran accord on inspections had eased some of Jerusalem’s concerns but that the petroleum tranche remained “the place where this can go wrong.”

Oil markets responded modestly on a day shaped equally by earnings and by the Geneva headlines. Brent crude settled at $94.30 a barrel, down 90 cents, with traders noting that the price cap and staged timeline meant any return of Iranian barrels would be gradual. “This is not a flood-the-market scenario,” said John Reilly, an energy strategist at Citi in London. “The framework is calibrated to bring crude back without breaking it. Whether it succeeds depends on the same monitoring architecture that just got authorized at the Security Council.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, in a telephone briefing from Riyadh, said the Kingdom welcomed the draft and would press regional partners to support implementation at the Marseille conference. Gulf officials have been quietly anxious that a sanctions framework moving faster than reconstruction financing could shift political momentum back toward Tehran before donor pledges hardened into commitments.

Senior diplomats said the next critical date was Tuesday’s Supreme National Security Council session in Tehran, followed by a planned meeting between Rubio and Araghchi’s deputy in Muscat later in the week. Officials said additional technical annexes covering verification protocols and dispute resolution would be finalized in the days ahead, with the aim of opening the framework for signature in the second half of May.