WASHINGTON\/TEHRAN
\nIran\u2019s Mehr news agency on Friday published a draft deal with the United States which would, if adopted, secure the release of $24 billion in frozen assets within a 60-day period. The agency, citing a source close to Iran\u2019s negotiating team, said an accord would allow for the \u201crelease of $24 billion of Iran\u2019s blocked funds during the 60-day final negotiation period.\u201d
\nIt added that half of that sum would be \u201cmade available to Iran before the start of negotiations.\u201d Mehr said the memorandum of understanding would include a \u201cpermanent and immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including in Lebanon.\u201d Iranian state media reported the nuclear program would be included in 60-day talks with US. State media also reported that Tehran would not cede control of Hormuz under the draft deal.
\n\u201cIran makes no commitment in this text to cede the management of the strait or the restoration of conditions that existed prior to the American and Israeli military aggression,\u201d according to the official IRNA news agency, which referred to \u201cthe broad outlines of the current text\u201d being finalized.
\nTehran earlier said Friday it had not reached a final decision on a deal to end the Middle East war, despite US President Donald Trump claiming an agreement could be signed in days and canceling threatened strikes on Iran. Claiming that talks with Iran had been \u201cbrought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved,\u201d Trump said he had \u201ccanceled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening.\u201d
\n\u201cTime and place of the signing to be announced shortly,\u201d he added.Trump said the finer points of the arrangement had been approved by the United States and its allies in the region, including Israel, with which Washington jointly launched the war in February.
\nHowever, Iran\u2019s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Tehran \u201chad not reached a final conclusion on the agreement.\u201d He added that \u201cmost of the text of the agreement was finalized, but the problem began when the US side made new demands and changed its positions.\u201d The Tasnim news agency noted that Trump had announced a deal was imminent 38 times in the previous two months.
\n\u201cUntil Iran announces the matter of a potential understanding, any news from Trump on this subject should be regarded the same as his previous messaging,\u201d it noted. Later Trump doubled down, telling reporters \u201cI understand the answer is yes,\u201d when asked if Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei had approved the deal.
\nPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s office said in a statement after the Israeli leader and Trump spoke that Israel was not a party to the memorandum of understanding with Iran. Netanyahu expressed his appreciation for Trump\u2019s commitment to securing a deal that includes removing enriched material, dismantling enrichment infrastructure, limiting missile output and ending support for regional proxies, the summary showed.
\n\u2018Approved by all parties\u2019 The war \u2014 which began February 28 with a wave of US-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei \u2014 paused under an April truce. But efforts to hammer out a permanent end to the fighting appeared stalled.
\nTehran\u2019s mayor said Thursday the former supreme leader\u2019s funeral would be delayed to the end of June or start of July. Trump\u2019s statement suggested back-channel mediation led by US allies like Pakistan and Qatar may have borne fruit \u2014 despite previously saying he would hit Iran \u201cVERY HARD TONIGHT.\u201d
\n\u201cDiscussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel\u201d and Gulf states, he posted. Egypt said the US and Iran should seize an \u201cavailable opportunity\u201d for a deal to end the war, after Trump canceled the threatened new strikes on Iran.
\nJust a day earlier, Trump had declared that not only would US forces step up airstrikes, they would also seize control of Iran\u2019s oil export facility on Kharg Island in the Gulf. Even as Trump\u2019s intervention raised hopes of a resolution, Kuwait reported Iran targeted its territory and damaged an airport radar forcing an airspace closure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON\/TEHRAN Iran\u2019s Mehr news agency on Friday published a draft deal with the United States which would, if adopted, secure the release of $24 billion in frozen assets within a 60-day period. The agency, citing a source close to Iran\u2019s negotiating team, said an accord would allow for the \u201crelease of $24 billion of Iran\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99040,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99028\/revisions\/99040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}