Online Reporter
Yashraj Sharma
United States President Donald Trump is chasing a pivotal moment of his presidency: a deal with Iran that he says is imminent, but which Tehran has since cautioned on.
Shortly after threatening to take control of Iran’s prized Khard island oil facility that processes 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports, Trump said he had called off strikes on the country as a deal with Tehran was close and could even be signed over the weekend.
Tehran acknowledged that discussions were taking place, but that a final decision on the proposed deal had not been reached. It listed several challenges in the way and accused the US of changing its demands.
Any “deal” agreed upon now, analysts say, will not be a final peace agreement, but an understanding to keep the ceasefire going while deeper negotiations take place.
Since the US and Israel started the war by attacking Iran in late February, Trump has claimed nearly 40 times that a deal with Iran was imminent. But after months of lurching from one crisis to another — and several exchanges of fire between the two sides this week alone — diplomacy has continued.
Direct talks between the US and Iran collapsed nearly as soon as they started in Islamabad in April, but the two sides have since exchanged a series of proposals and counterproposals for peace via Pakistani mediators.
So, what is the “deal” Trump is announcing to end a war that has negatively hit the president’s approval ratings, and brought about the worst energy crisis in modern history?
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, Trump announced that “discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved”.
Therefore, he said, Washington was cancelling scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran on Thursday evening.
Trump further stated that “discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE (United Arab Emirates), Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others”.
The president added that the time and place of the signing of an agreement would be “announced shortly” and that a ceremony could take place somewhere in Europe over the coming weekend. He said this would be led by Vice President JD Vance, who oversaw face-to-face talks in Islamabad in April when the ceasefire was first brokered.
Trump said he believed Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had approved the agreement as well. There has been no confirmation of this from Tehran.
During a tele-rally in support of Republican Senate candidate Barry Moore, Trump said: “We made a great deal. There’ll be no nuclear weapons. People will start coming home very soon. It’s pretty much, pretty much completed. We got everything we wanted.”
What is Iran saying?
Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said Washington’s statements “about the agreement are speculation and nothing has been finalised”.
“So far, Iran has not reached a final conclusion about the agreement,” he said, according to Iran’s semi-state Tasnim news agency.
“Due to the illegal actions of the United States in its aggression against Iran, the diplomatic process has also been affected,” Baghaei added. “The situation in the Strait of Hormuz is more insecure due to US actions.”
Baghaei acknowledged that the “mediators are active and we have clearly communicated our positions to them”, referring to Qatar and Pakistan.
“The status of the negotiations was clear to us from the beginning, and most of the text was finalised, but the Americans kept changing their positions,” he added. “Iran has proven that it does not compromise on what it has defined as a red line.”
So, what would be in a potential deal?
On the US side, Trump made clear in multiple statements on Thursday that Iran would not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon, an American red line.
For years, Iranian officials have insisted that the country’s nuclear activities are limited to energy production and other civilian purposes, and have rejected accusations that Tehran is seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
However, since the 2018 unilateral US withdrawal from the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which restricted Iran to enriching uranium for power purposes only, Iran is understood to have built a stockpile of 440kg of 60 percent-enriched uranium, a level far beyond that required for power purposes.
“(Iran) had a clause they won’t develop. I said, ‘What about purchasing?’ They said, ‘Well, we didn’t cover that.’ So, two days later, they agreed to that. We got everything we wanted,” Trump added.
The US president also said that, under the deal, the ongoing US naval blockade on Iranian ports would be lifted immediately and the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed, would be reopened for maritime traffic, “and you’ll have oil prices dropping like a rock”.
There has been no confirmation of the deal’s contents from the Iranian side.
Trump has not commented on whether Lebanon, which Israel has been striking on a near-daily basis since the start of the Iran war, would be included in the deal. Israel has occupied nearly one-fifth of the country since early March, when the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah entered the war in retaliation against strikes on Iran.
While Iran says it will not contemplate any deal that does not include a full ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel wants to retain the right to strike Hezbollah targets there. Analysts say a question remains over whether Trump can rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this matter.
Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli prime minister had spoken with Trump about the “emerging memorandum of understanding with Iran to enter negotiations”.
Clarifying that Israel is not a party to the deal, his office said that the “final agreement at the conclusion of the negotiations will include the removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enrichment infrastructure, the limitation of missile production and the cessation of Iran’s support for its terrorist proxies in the region”.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s emir has also spoken with Trump, welcoming efforts to reach a deal, and adding that the country supports “everything that would consolidate regional and international security and stability”.
What does Iran want?
Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that Iran has put forward a 14-point memorandum of understanding draft, which it said was subject to change.
Ultimately, Iran wants to separate the issues of Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz from wider negotiations about its nuclear and ballistic missiles programmes, among other things.
For now, it wants a “permanent and immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon”, and a US commitment not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs.
It has proposed the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz “with Iranian arrangements” within 30 days, and a complete removal of the US naval blockade.
Mehr news agency also reported that Iran wants all sanctions on the sale of its oil to be lifted and all frozen Iranian assets to be released.
It then proposes a 60-day negotiation period to reach a final agreement about nuclear and other deeper issues, although Tehran has reiterated its commitment not to produce nuclear weapons in the draft.
Discussions about Iran’s missile programme and support for its regional allies, like Hezbollah, “have been definitively removed from the agenda” for this initial agreement, Mehr reported.
What are key stumbling blocks for a final US-Iran deal?
After decades of hostilities, Tehran’s nuclear programme remains the central contentious point between the US and Iran.
The US has made it clear that Iran must not possess, buy or develop nuclear weapons — or even the capacity to be able to do so.
Iran, conversely, maintains that its programme is for civilian purposes and could be willing to negotiate limits to its nuclear activities if sanctions are removed.
Sanctions
Iran is the most heavily sanctioned country in the world. Punishing US sanctions against Tehran have crippled its economy, banking system and oil exports.
Iran insists on an end to the sanctions regime, while the US has shown willingness to work on this in a phased and conditional manner, but differences over how to do this linger.
Iran closed the strategic waterway, which is the only route to the open ocean for Gulf oil producers and through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies are shipped during peacetime, soon after the war began.
Iran has, at times, allowed ships from countries it deems “friendly” to pass the strait, but this week reaffirmed that the waterway was closed following new US strikes.
Iran views the Strait of Hormuz as its most important point of leverage in negotiations with the US and it will not give up control of the strait, it has said.
On Thursday morning, Trump was still insisting that the US controls the strait, even as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards maintain a firm grip over it.
At one point, Trump had said that he may be open to controlling the waterway in collaboration with Supreme Leader Khamenei.
Tehran, however, maintains that as the Strait of Hormuz is not in international waters — it runs through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman — it is considering charging vessels for transiting the waterway, in the form of providing insurance cover or other services to shipping.
The fate of billions of dollars of Iranian funds frozen overseas is another major sticking point.
