Islamabad: The United States and Iran have reached an agreement to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz, offering relief to the global economy more than three months after fighting began.
Details of the deal were not immediately available. Key mediator Pakistan said the signing will be Friday in Switzerland. Key issues like Iran’s nuclear programme are expected to be addressed later.
US President Donald Trump confirmed a deal had been reached and said he had authorised an end to the US naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, imposed in retaliation for Iran’s grip on the crucial waterway.
“Congratulations to all!” Trump wrote on social media, adding: “I hereby fully authorise the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorise the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade.”
The US previously said it would ease its blockade of Iranian ports as the strait reopens, and would agree to relax sanctions to allow Iran to sell more of its oil and strengthen its battered economy.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the agreement on state television but said Iran would not start implementing it until it was signed on Friday. He said the deal followed over 14 hours of talks in Tehran with a representative from Qatar, another mediator.
Iranian state TV showed a banner asserting: “US was forced to sign an agreement to end the war.”
Pakistan first announced the deal after a day in which Israel, sidelined from the negotiations, attacked Beirut’s southern suburbs while pursuing the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. The attacks posed a threat to completing the negotiations.
“Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said, adding that mediators this week will facilitate meetings to “lay the foundation for the technical talks.”
Broader negotiations on outstanding issues like Iran’s nuclear programme would continue over the next 60 days, two senior Pakistani officials said earlier Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly. If the sides fail to reach a resolution within that time, the timeline could be extended.
The deal likely returns the region to a status that existed before the war, but with thousands of people dead and Iran wielding a new source of negotiating pressure with its ability to influence shipping in the strait. The waterway is crucial to significant shipments of oil, natural gas and related products like fertiliser, and its effective closure rocked the global economy.
Of the stated targets by the US and Israel when they launched the war on February 28 with strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran still has a missile programme, support for armed proxies in the region like Hezbollah and a stockpile of highly enriched uranium for its nuclear program.
Khamenei’s son is now supreme leader, though he has not been seen in public since the war began. His approval was needed for Iran to sign off on the deal.
Iran wanted a ceasefire deal to include the fighting in Lebanon, where Israel has pushed its invasion deeper than at any point in over a quarter-century as it targets Hezbollah. Tehran also has sought the release of billions of dollars in frozen funds.
The emerging deal had been sharply criticised by Israel’s government and by critics in Trump’s own Republican Party. Some said it did not improve on the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the US from during his first term and is still described as “bad”.
There was also apparent friction inside Iran in the hours before the announcement, as the government earlier Sunday warned that any division at home over the deal weakens its negotiating position. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian urged national unity and called it a “disgrace” when someone stands before parliament and calls anyone who negotiates a traitor.
After the war began, Iran attacked Israel and several Arab Gulf nations with missiles and drones. A ceasefire was reached on April 7. Ten days later, the US military imposed its blockade. A historic face-to-face meeting between Vice President J D Vance and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf ended without success.
Throughout negotiations, Trump alternatively threatened to destroy Iranian infrastructure, even its civilisation, and praised the relationship with Iran as “more professional” as his administration sought an exit from the war with midterm US elections coming later this year.
Iran’s government, with its own tensions around hard-liners as it scrambled to replace several top officials killed in the war, repeatedly expressed wariness of negotiations after rounds of talks last year and early this year ended with US and Israeli attacks.
Tehran has emphasised that it wanted a deal to focus on ending the war, with discussions put off until later on its nuclear programme – the issue at the centre of it all.
Iran has 440.9 kg (972 pounds) of uranium that is enriched up to 60 per cent purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran has long maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful and has not publicly committed to giving up the enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged by US strikes last year.
At times, the US had sought the removal of the enriched uranium from Iran as part of a deal. Russia has offered to take it. At other times, Trump said he wanted the uranium destroyed. (AP)
