Iran and the United States appeared to move closer Sunday to an agreement aimed at ending the war, as Qatari mediators traveled to Tehran to help finalize the deal, according to two regional officials.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said they were cautiously optimistic that Washington and Tehran were nearing an understanding that could stop a conflict that has killed thousands and lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The vital waterway’s closure has rattled global markets.
President Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Saturday that the agreement would be signed Sunday. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said a deal could be reached in the coming days. Trump also said the Strait of Hormuz would reopen immediately once the agreement is signed.
The agreement is expected to be signed electronically rather than at an in-person ceremony, although the exact timing and format remain unclear.
Nuclear and other issues still to be finalized
While the proposed deal would not resolve the most contentious disputes between the two countries — including Iran’s nuclear program and frozen Iranian assets — it would establish a 60-day framework for technical talks on those issues, according to Pakistani and regional officials familiar with the negotiations. They also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Those officials said Pakistan has spent months trying to keep the negotiations alive, at times preventing both sides from abandoning the talks altogether as the process repeatedly came close to collapse.
Under the current deal being discussed, US and Israel appear to have fallen short of their original goals of destroying Iran’s missile and nuclear programs and ending its support for proxies.
It is not clear how the deal will address these issues, or if they will be part of the final agreement.
Meanwhile, Trump was expected to discuss demining the Strait of Hormuz during the Group of Seven summit that starts Monday.
The waterway is crucial to significant shipments of oil, natural gas and related products like fertilizer, and its effective closure rocked the global economy.
The apparent breakthrough came after Iran exchanged fire with the US and Israel earlier in the week, threatening to rupture the ceasefire and push the Middle East back into full-scale war.
A tenuous cease-fire has been in place since April 7.
Iran’s nuclear program and highly enriched uranium have long been at the center of tensions with the US and Israel and an international source of concern.
Trump on social media asserted that “when all is calm,” the US would go in and “downblend and destroy” the enriched uranium in Iran or in the US.
Iran has 972 pounds of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is peaceful and has not publicly committed to giving up the enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged by US strikes last year.
Iran wants Lebanon included in the deal
Meanwhile, fighting has continued in Lebanon between Israel, which has pushed its invasion deeper than at any point in over a quarter-century, and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group despite a cease-fire.
Iran has wanted a cease-fire deal to include the fighting in Lebanon. Tehran also has sought the release of billions of dollars in frozen funds.
The deal in its current form is a deep disappointment to Israel’s government, which has been sidelined in negotiations led by Pakistan and others. Even critics in Trump’s own Republican Party, struggling with an unpopular war ahead of the midterm elections, criticized the deal.
Some said it did not improve on the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the US from during his first term and which he still describes as “bad.”
