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President Trump has announced that he will not unfreeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets until a lasting peace deal is reached to end the war with Iran.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: Back in 1979, after revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took American hostages, the US froze billions of dollars in Iranian assets, kicking off decades of financial warfare between the two countries. The pile has only grown since, as successive waves of US and international sanctions (especially those targeting Iran’s nuclear program over the past two decades) trapped Tehran’s money in banks around the world. All told, more than $100 billion in Iranian money is locked up today, much of it oil-export revenue and central-bank reserves stranded in countries like South Korea, Iraq and China that can’t legally process the transactions. The 2015 nuclear deal was supposed to gradually unlock that money in exchange for Iran curbing its program, and it briefly did just that, but Trump tore up the agreement and reimposed sanctions in 2018. Now Iran is pushing to claw back somewhere between $12 billion and $24 billion as part of any ceasefire.

What’s going on now: During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said money and sanctions relief only “comes after” a deal, adding, “If they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking.” Iranian officials say that stance is exactly what’s holding things up, with Mohsen Rezaee, a military adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, telling CNN the “negotiations are at a deadlock” and that “the ball is in Trump’s court,” calling the asset release a “test of trust.”

Complicating matters, Trump’s own Treasury is reportedly moving to spend some of that money elsewhere. Officials say Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has told his team to pull together repair-cost figures from Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain all took damage in the war) so frozen Iranian assets could foot the bill, a plan that could even cover past damage and threatens to freeze the talks even harder, the very negotiations meant to extend the truce and get the Strait of Hormuz open again.

Trump also said that they’re “very close to a deal” but warned that if one is not made he is “going to blow the hell out of them.” He also laid out a plan to extract and get rid of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, doing it jointly under a deal or by force without one.

This all comes as Trump offered unusually personal praise for Iran’s new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who took his father Ali’s place after the elder Khamenei was killed in the February 28 strikes, calling him “more rational” and brave despite being “very seriously injured,” and saying there’s “a good probability” the US knows the unseen leader’s whereabouts. The president also said he’ll keep some 50,000 US troops in the region until “completion,” claimed he has “totally destroyed” Iran’s military, and predicted oil prices will fall once the war ends.