Trump Says Iran Accord Is Close, Tehran Says Nothing Is Final

President Donald Trump said he had canceled planned strikes on Iran and that a peace agreement could be signed within days, and Pakistan, which has mediated the talks, went further, saying a final text had been concluded. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said peace "has never been this close" and that a "final, agreed upon text" of a United States-Iran deal had been reached, with Iran holding final deliberations, RFE/RL reported. A deal could be signed in Switzerland as soon as Sunday, Bloomberg reported. A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry had earlier said "nothing has been finalized," according to The New York Times.

The terms remain contested, and Trump disputed the version circulating in Iranian media. Iran's Mehr news agency published a draft accord that, The Hindu reported, would open a 60-day negotiating window for a wider nuclear deal and release roughly 24 billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets within that period. Trump rejected that account, saying the leaked terms had "nothing to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing," and dismissing them as fake. Reporting from the Israeli outlet Globes indicated the memorandum would extend the existing ceasefire by 60 days and that Tehran insists ballistic missiles will not be part of the talks. The 14-point draft published by Iranian outlets also called for the withdrawal of all United States forces and reconstruction plans for Iran worth at least 300 billion dollars, CNBC reported.

Both the claim of progress and the draft itself have come from the American president, Iranian state-linked media, and the Pakistani mediator rather than a jointly published text, Deutsche Welle noted. United States forces shot down two Iranian attack drones near the Strait of Hormuz early on Friday after Iranian forces fired on a transiting vessel, an American official said, and air-raid sirens sounded in northern Israel after an interception over southern Lebanon, signs that low-intensity fighting continues even as diplomacy advances.

Iranian clerics remained defiant. A Friday prayer leader in Saveh described Trump as a symbol of oppression, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported, and officials in Khuzestan said compromise with the enemy "is not permissible at any level," language that complicates any quick endorsement of a deal by Tehran.