President Donald Trump on Thursday said the United States and Iran could sign a peace deal as soon as this weekend that would reopen shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The agreement, if finalized, would be the most significant diplomatic breakthrough yet to end the three-month war, which has killed thousands of people and sent global energy prices sharply higher.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that Tehran is likely to approve the agreement, though it has yet to give a formal response.
“We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
“The Strait will officially open as soon as we sign, which could be soon, very soon, maybe over the weekend in Europe,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance could sign for the United States, Trump said.
Trump’s announcement came after he called off planned military strikes on Iran, citing progress in talks.
Since mid-March, Trump has repeatedly claimed that a deal with Iran to end the war is close. The two sides have traded strikes throughout the week, straining a ceasefire announced in April.
Still, Iranian and Western sources said earlier on Thursday that efforts to reach an interim deal to end hostilities have intensified.
Three Iranian sources said a political understanding had been reached, but some issues remained to be discussed in detail, including a mechanism for the release of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in foreign banks.
The deal would temporarily ease Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz and end a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports, the sources said. Unresolved questions over Tehran’s nuclear development program and its stockpile of highly enriched uranium would be left for future talks.
It was unclear whether such a deal would satisfy critics within Trump’s Republican Party who say that any agreement must close Tehran’s path to developing a nuclear weapon. Opposition from Iran hawks helped derail a previous effort to secure a deal to open the strait.
Analysts have said Trump is concerned that any deal will be compared with a 2015 agreement that he criticized as overly lenient. Trump pulled the U.S. out of that accord in 2018 during his first term in office.
Trump said on social media the agreement had been approved by “the highest level” of Iranian leadership, as well as other countries in the region including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
U.S. stocks rose and oil prices fell on the news.
The war has killed thousands of people, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, and pushed up global oil prices since the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran on February 28.
(Reuters)