After days of uncertainty and tit-for-tat military strikes, Pakistan’s prime minister said Friday that the United States and Iran have agreed to the terms a peace deal.
“Setting aside the noise, we can confirm that a final, agreed upon text of the peace deal has been reached,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif wrote on social media, adding that as mediator Pakistan was now working with both sides to finalize the next steps.
A senior Trump administration official confirmed in a call with reporters Friday that the two sides were 80 to 85 percent of the way to reaching a deal, but that there was still some uncertainty that the Iranians would agree.
“Their system is very complicated. Most of the people that we’ve been speaking to, and most of the people who have authority within their system, want to sign this deal, but not everybody,” said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration.
It has not yet been decided when or where the deal would be signed, the senior official added.
The announcement came as U.S. and Iranian officials publicly signaled Friday that an deal was close, though the exact details of such an agreement remain unclear.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media that a deal has “never been closer,” but asked media to not speculate about the terms of the deal, which he called the “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding” after the venue for U.S.-Iran talks in April.
President Donald Trump, who had earlier in the day accused Iran of leaking false details about the proposed terms of the deal, appeared to endorse Araghchi’s message, sharing it on his own social media account.
If a deal is reached, it could bring to an end the months-long conflict that began on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched devastating military strikes against Iran’s political and military leadership, including the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The conflict has had global ramifications, spiking gas and commodity prices. The Iranian regime has struck back at the U.S. and its allies in the region and both sides have forced the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping lane in the Persian Gulf that prior to the conflict saw roughly 20 percent of global oil pass through it.
A fragile ceasefire agreement was reached in April, but the conflict sparked back to life in recent days after Israel carried out airstrikes on Sunday in southern Beirut, targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, prompting Iran and Israel to exchange strikes.
Iranian forces downed a U.S. helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, leading Trump to order retaliatory strikes. On Thursday, however, Trump announced on social media that he had canceled planned strikes for that day, claiming that a deal with Iran was close.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, confirmed Friday that an agreement was close and said that it would see the Strait of Hormuz reopened and Iran’s nuclear program dismantled, with its remaining enriched uranium removed.
Iran would not be granted immediate access to its billions of dollars in frozen assets held by the U.S., the official said, but it could be released later if terms were met. “This is what they agreed to. This is a performance-based deal,” the official said.
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