US-Iran peace deal remains elusive as Trump and Tehran trade conflicting claims

Prospects for an immediate end to the war between Iran and the US remained uncertain on Friday amid a chaotic series of conflicting claims and counter-claims by US and Iranian officials about ongoing negotiations.

Donald Trump seemed to distance himself from his earlier comments that suggested a preliminary agreement could be signed as soon as this weekend, with a series of angry social media posts describing the Iranians as “very dishonorable people to deal with”.

“With them, there is no such thing as dealing in good faith …. They better get their act together, and FAST! ” the US president wrote on Friday.

The outburst came after Iranian news agencies close to the regime denied that the terms of any deal had been fully agreed, and published a supposed draft of a finalised deal.

Adding to the confusion, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, on Friday claimed, in a post on social media, that a final text of a peace deal between the US and Iran had been agreed, without providing any further information.

Neither Tehran nor Washington has confirmed that a final version has been agreed upon, though one senior US official separately suggested there was an “80 to 85%” likelihood of an agreement being signed within days.

“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,” the senior official said. “And those internal fractures are sort of working themselves out as they continue to try to get to a point where they can say yes to the deal.”

The senior official added that Iran would “get rewarded economically for complying with their obligations under the deal”.

“I think that both of us [the US and Iran] feel frankly pretty good about where there’s a meeting of the minds here, there’s going to be a significant relief of economic sanctions,” the official said.

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Friday that an “Islamabad memorandum of understanding” for addressing the US-Israeli war against Iran had “never been closer”, but urged media outlets to refrain from speculating about its contents until it was finalised.

Araghchi said Iran would share all details with the public in due course, in what he called Tehran’s responsible and transparent approach.

IRNA, Iran’s state news agency, confirmed that “the broad outlines” of a deal were being finalised, but sowed further confusion when it said Iran would not give up its control of the strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied gas supplies and has been shut to most shipping by Tehran since shortly after the war began in February.

The US has insisted that Tehran, which wants to levy lucrative tolls on ships passing through the strait, must restore freedom of shipping in the crucial waterway.

A US official on Friday said the strait would open and the US would lift its blockade on Iranian ports as a part of the terms that Washington and Tehran have agreed.