The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs assured this Friday that an agreement between his country and the United States to end the war in the Middle East had “never been so close”. “As soon as the final stages of our negotiations are completed, this agreement will be signed and announced. The signature will initially be done digitally. Each party will sign remotely. Then it will be announced that this memorandum of understanding has been signed by both parties,” he said, interviewed by state television. “It could happen in the next few days. I am hopeful,” he added.
“Pending its finalization, the media should refrain from speculating on its contents,” the minister wrote on X, adding that “all details would be communicated to the public in due course.”
“We can confirm that an agreement on the final text of the peace agreement has been reached and that Pakistan is now working with both parties to finalize the next steps,†then wrote Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on 80 to 85%,” but “not 100%,” the probability that an agreement will be signed.
Earlier in the day, Donald Trump had accused Iran of circulating a false text of agreement, calling on Tehran to “get its act together, and FAST.” “This is what they accepted,” a senior American official had also indicated, delivering a list of five points: “the nuclear material [iranien] will be destroyed and taken away”; “the nuclear program will be dismantled”; “their funds will not be released until they fulfill the terms”; “the Strait of Hormuz will be opened”; “No financing of terrorist groups by Iran. HAS”
Fall in oil prices
At the start of the day, Tehran had nevertheless affirmed that it had not yet decided on the agreement announced by Donald Trump to end the war in the Middle East, tempering this new announcement by the American president who mentioned a signature “this weekend Donald Trump on Thursday canceled American strikes that he had threatened to launch in the evening against Iran, ensuring that common ground had been found. “We have just reached a very good agreement to end the war with Iran and, once the documents are finalized, which should be done in the coming days, we will probably have a signature, perhaps in Europe,” declared the American president from the Oval Office. However, Iranian diplomacy soon after assured that Tehran had not yet decided to sign.
“So far, Iran has not yet reached a final conclusion regarding the agreement,” spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told Iranian state media. The Republican leader said he believed that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, had validated what he called “a very solid framework agreement” with the United States and said his vice-president, JD Vance, would possibly sign it as soon as “this weekend.” But he gave no details on the content of this compromise, except that it ensured an immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz after signing, and the impossibility for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. According to a message on X from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump had promised that any final agreement would include “the elimination of enriched uranium” from Tehran.
This hope of a resolution to the conflict led to a decline in oil, the price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea, a benchmark for the world market, dropping 1.11% to 89.37 dollars around 4:30 a.m. Paris time. Reassured, the Asian markets also jumped on Friday morning, the Nikkei index in Tokyo climbing by almost 4%, and the Kospi in Seoul surging by more than 7%.
Trump calls off strikes
On Thursday, Donald Trump promised to hit Iran “very hard” in the evening, threatening in particular to “take the island of Kharg”, its main oil terminal. But “taking note of the fact that the discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran were seen and approved by the highest Iranian authorities,” he later announced that he had “cancelled the strikes and bombings that were planned against Iran,” on his Truth Social network.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump had already promised an imminent agreement with Iran, for the 38th time since the start of the conflict, according to a CNN count. Egypt called on Washington and Tehran to seize “the opportunity” of an agreement to end the war, after the cancellation of strikes on Iran, in a statement published late Thursday. The ceasefire in the Middle East, which came into force on April 8, was generally respected until last weekend, but this week was marked by a marked resumption of hostilities, more than three months after the start of the conflict. The US military said it had targeted Iranian military surveillance installations, communications systems and air defense sites throughout the country overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.
Iran responded by firing around 20 missiles at a US base at Azraq in Jordan – all of which were intercepted – and again targeted the Gulf monarchies with drones. In Bahrain, a child was injured by debris.
Hormuz closed again
The Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the hydrocarbons consumed in the world passed before the war, concentrated tensions: the Iranian maritime authority announced that it was closing it completely “until further notice”, although the passage of around twenty ships per day had until then been authorized. Iran has locked it down since the start of the conflict on February 28, with the United States imposing a blockade of Iranian ports in return.
The conflict resumed on Sunday when Iran launched missiles at Israel, for the first time since the start of the fragile truce, in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut. Tehran, sponsor of Lebanese Hezbollah, insists that any agreement to end the war in the Middle East include Lebanon, whose fate Washington would like to treat separately. Israel responded to Iranian missiles, before the two enemies announced to suspend hostilities, as demanded by Donald Trump.
Ten staff members at a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Tire were injured in an Israeli bombardment on Thursday, the hospital’s director said. Lebanon was drawn into war on March 2, when Hezbollah targeted Israeli territory in support of Iran. Since then, Israel has been shelling the neighboring country, saying it wants to “eliminate” the Shiite movement. Israeli operations have killed more than 3,700 people, mainly in the south of the country where its army now occupies part of the territory.
