Iran warned Monday that an agreement to end the war launched by the United States and Israel was not imminent, after President Donald Trump raised and then lowered expectations that a deal may be close.
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While Tehran acknowledged progress but played down the idea that an announcement could come soon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a deal was still possible Monday.
An agreement could be finalized “today,” Rubio said during a trip to India. He cautioned that if talks fail, Washington would find “another way” to resolve the situation.
As a flurry of diplomacy unfolded from the Middle East to China, Iran’s top negotiators were in Qatar — an increasingly central player in the accelerating efforts to secure a deal that would end the three-month war and restore shipping through the crucial Strait of Hormuz trade route.
On Monday morning, Trump warned that while negotiations were proceeding “nicely,” fighting would resume “bigger and stronger than ever before” if the talks failed.
Trump had said Sunday that he would not “rush into a deal,” a step back from earlier public statements from the president and officials from both nations that indicated an announcement may be close.
Trump also explicitly linked an Iran deal with the Abraham Accords, calling on a number of nations in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, to join the breakthrough agreements between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors.
‘Disastrous mistake’
Emerging details from a possible Iran deal memorandum of understanding had drawn pushback, with senior Republican lawmakers warning it could be a “disastrous mistake.”
Earlier, Trump hit back at this criticism, assailing what he termed “Dumocrats, RINOS, and Fools who know nothing about the potential deal.”
Iranian officials have been sticking with their more cautious messaging.
Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told reporters the focus of the negotiations was on ending the war and “at this stage we are not discussing the details of the nuclear issue.”
“It’s true that we have reached conclusions on many issues under discussion, but no one can claim that this means an imminent agreement is about to be signed,” Baghaei said, according to comments carried by the hard-line Student News Network.
The agreement in the works does not detail how the Strait of Hormuz will be managed, he said, adding that it should be “a matter for its coastal states.”
Tehran’s effective closure of the key waterway has wreaked havoc on global energy markets, but oil prices fell more than $5 to two-week lows Monday as optimism about a deal grew. The average gas prices in the U.S. dropped slightly to $4.51.
Iran’s top negotiators, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, arrived in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Monday as part of the ongoing negotiations, a diplomat briefed on the visit told NBC News.
In recent days, Qatar has once again taken a more active role alongside Pakistan in mediating between the U.S. and Iran.
The framework of a potential agreement, according to a senior administration official, would give the two sides 60 days to reach a full peace deal that the official said “will deliver on President Trump’s priorities and ensure the United States and the region are safer and more prosperous going forward.”
The agreement would commit Iran to not developing a nuclear weapon, the senior administration official said, and commit it to giving up the “nuclear dust” — Trump’s term for enriched uranium — though it would leave details on how this may happen to talks over the following 60 days.
The official said the framework would also get the Strait of Hormuz “de-mined and back open for business.”
In exchange, the U.S. would gradually lift its naval blockade and offer Iran long-sought financial relief for its ailing economy, though the official said this would only happen once Tehran followed through on its side of the agreement.
If the deal does go into effect soon, the 60-day window effectively pushes the next ceasefire deadline to late July or early August.
That would mean dragging out the war even closer to the November midterm elections, and certainly in the middle of campaign season for some Republicans who want Trump to wrap up the conflict as it drags down the party’s poll numbers.
Trump also introduced a new variable into the talks when he called on countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to join the Abraham Accords.
“After all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
While the U.S. has sought to widen the membership of the agreements, which were a major boost for Israel as it sought to lessen its regional isolation, there is significant opposition to them throughout the Middle East.