ISLAMABAD/TEHRAN:
Pakistan on Friday expressed growing optimism over an elusive deal, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying the final text of the US-Iran peace deal had been agreed.
“We can confirm that a final and agreed text of the peace agreement has been reached and that Pakistan is now working closely with both parties to finalize the next steps,” the Prime Minister said on X.
He tagged the presidents of the United States and Iran as well as other leaders of both countries. Pakistan has been playing the role of mediator between the two sides for months.
“Peace has never been closer than today,” Sharif said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted a deal with the United States to end the Middle East war had never been closer, after US President Donald Trump furiously accused Tehran of negotiating in bad faith.
“Amid Pakistan’s intense mediation efforts, we are fully aware of the relentless disinformation campaign being waged by those who want to sabotage the peace agreement,” the prime minister added.
However, publicly, the warring parties’ negotiating positions remain far apart, with Iranian state media publishing an analysis of what was allegedly on the table that was in stark contradiction to Washington’s long-standing red lines.
During the weeks of halted negotiations – marked by threats and exchanges of fire despite an April truce – US President Donald Trump repeatedly insisted that a deal was all but done, only to have negotiations drag on.
The president reiterated this assertion on Thursday, but attacked Tehran on Friday, accusing it of negotiating in bad faith following information from the Iranian media.
In a social media post, Trump dismissed the Iranian accounts as having “NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to in writing.”
“It’s very dishonorable to deal with people,” he continued. “They better get their act together, and FAST!” »
But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to downplay the row.
“The Islamabad MOU has never been closer,” he wrote on social media, referring to the Pakistani capital that hosted previous US-Iran talks.
“Pending its finalization, the media should refrain from speculating on its content,” he added.
Trump later posted a screenshot of Araghchi’s message on his own feed.
Disputing Trump’s accusation of “bad faith”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said an agreement had now been reached with Washington “on most points”.
He added that a meeting was also underway in Iran to finalize a consensus.
“We are in the final stages of reaching a conclusion,” he said.
A senior US official also expressed optimism that the parties would “sign this agreement in the coming days.”
“If I had to assure you that we were going to sign this agreement, I might have said 75 percent this morning, it’s probably more like 80-85 percent now, but it’s not 100 percent,” the official told reporters in a phone call.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry said Friday it had been in contact with the United States and Iran and had “proposed Switzerland as a possible venue for signing, if the parties accept it.”
U.S. ally Israel said Trump had promised it that any deal would see Iran stripped of its enriched nuclear materials, but Tehran’s official news agency IRNA said that was not even on the table.
According to the IRNA account, after an initial agreement is signed, Iran and the United States will hold an additional 60 days of negotiations and “Iran’s right to enrich uranium and the retention of enriched materials… will be emphasized for inclusion in the final agreement.”
Beyond that, according to IRNA, Iran would insist on managing traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the main maritime trade route transporting oil and gas from the Gulf, which Tehran has blocked since the start of the war.
On Friday, Iran’s Mehr news agency, citing a source close to the country’s negotiating team, said the deal would also result in the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets.
But those details contradict the summary offered by a senior White House official, who told AFP that Iran had agreed to dismantle its nuclear program, destroy its stockpile of enriched uranium and reopen the strait, and that Tehran would not see any of its frozen funds returned until it honored those commitments.
US Vice President JD Vance also said Iran was “not receiving any money and no funds are being released for simply signing a deal or attending a meeting.”
But, he added, if “Iran fulfills its obligations, then the economic benefits will accrue to it and to the entire region.”
In Tehran, some ordinary Iranians feared that a deal would strengthen the power of the authorities.
“I’m not sure how I feel,” a 29-year-old cafe worker told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
“The main goal of this war was for the United States to remove the system, but that didn’t happen. So what’s the point of a deal?”
