US President Donald Trump has a busy weekend ahead. The football World Cup has returned to the country after three decades; the White House is preparing for a UFC bout to mark Trump’s 80th birthday on Sunday; then, he will fly to the French Alps for a G7 summit.
But amid the pageantry, Trump is chasing a pivotal moment of his presidency as well: 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 Kharg island oil facility, which 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, and listed a number of challenges in the way.
Any “deal” agreed 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?
What has Trump said about the deal with Iran?
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, 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 that 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.”
Has a deal really been done?
Iran has not confirmed its part in any deal – indeed, it has referred to Trump’s comments as “speculation”. Furthermore, analysts warned that Trump’s rhetoric does not always match reality.
On Friday, Wolfgang Pusztai, a defence analyst and former Austrian military official, dismissed Trump’s claims that a definitive deal ending the war with Iran would be announced.
“All the statements of the US president must be seen under the condition they should not be taken literally,” he said. “Trump’s statements are part of information warfare.”
Trump has three target audiences with his comments: his Republican base, the international stock and oil markets, and the government in Iran, Pusztai told Al Jazeera.
“He wants to increase the pressure on Iran by these statements by threatening military action and by continuing the blockade.”
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”.
“If Iran was going to back down from its principled positions under pressure and threats, it would have done so a year ago,” he added, responding to Trump’s insistence that Tehran is under pressure to agree to a deal.
“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.
“The big thing is there will be no nuclear weapons in Iran. That means not developed and not purchased,” Trump said.
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 which 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?
Iran’s nuclear programme
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.
Strait of Hormuz
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. The US has imposed a corresponding naval blockade on Iranian ports in an attempt to put Tehran under pressure.
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 and shipping traffic has, once again, stalled.
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.
Frozen Iranian assets
The fate of billions of dollars of Iranian funds frozen overseas is another major sticking point.
Tehran wants access to these assets as part of any deal, arguing the money belongs to Iran and is needed for economic recovery, especially after the damage inflicted by US-Israeli strikes.
US negotiators have been reluctant to agree to a large-scale release of funds without significant concessions on Iran’s nuclear programme, however.
Extending the ceasefire to Lebanon
Israel’s bombardment and occupation of nearly one-fifth of Lebanon are a major sticking point in the US and Iran’s peace negotiations – and Tehran is pushing for a broader regional ceasefire, including an end to strikes on its allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
So far, a bilateral, US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has not stopped the bombings in southern Lebanon for even a day.
Earlier this week, Iran upped the stakes for Israel’s continued disruption of a peace deal by launching missiles at it after Israel bombed southern Lebanon again.
“The big question is whether Netanyahu would accept a deal that calls on Israel to halt its hostilities in Lebanon and even withdraw its troops,” Andrea Dessi, a lecturer in international relations at the American University of Rome, told Al Jazeera on Friday.
“The idea of linking Lebanon to the Iranian front is something that the Israeli government has been trying to avoid at the highest level possible,” he added.
Will we ever see a final peace deal?
Aniseh Tabrizi, an associate fellow on the Middle East and North Africa Programme at think tank Chatham House in London, told Al Jazeera that neither side is ready to finalise a deal, but they may be closer to agreeing to a “memorandum of understanding” which would pave the way for deeper negotiations.
“Until a deal is actually signed, it’s very hard to say that it is actually a done thing. It’s risky to celebrate yet,” she cautioned.
“There will be more hurdles that both need to address to get there, including spoilers such as Israel that would try to unravel everything until the very end,” Tabrizi said.
She said any final deal resulting in lasting peace between the US and Iran will be hard to achieve.
“It is one thing to open the Strait of Hormuz in return for economic incentive and completely another to finalise an agreement, with nitty-gritties on the nuclear issue, Iran’s regional posture, and on the security guarantees that Iran wants in return.”
“The final deal still remains very challenging,” she told Al Jazeera.
Richard Weitz, an international security expert at the NATO Defense College, said Trump’s statements sound “like it’s a phased deal, with a couple of provisions executed quickly, such as opening the Strait of Hormuz”, with “others to be dealt with later, such as the nuclear question”.
“There is always the risk that you could start off well enough, but then they get bogged down in details later, and that leads to the reimposition or reversal of the achievements of the first phase,” he added.
Arman Mahmoudian, a professor at the University of South Florida, argued that there has been “a great deal of shift of diplomacy within less than a week”, referring to the latest round of fighting this week.
“It showed to everybody that the current status quo – the current ‘no war, no peace’ – was not sustainable,” he said. “Either it is going to resolve in a war, or it has to be a deal that comes out of it. There is no third option in it.”
