The United States and Iran appear close to signing the first stage of a peace deal, but both sides are offering different timelines as to when it will happen.
US President Donald Trump and mediators from Pakistan say an agreement is scheduled to be signed on Sunday. But Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it will not be Sunday – and an exact date has yet to be set.
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So, what do we know as the conflict enters its 107th day?
In Iran
Marking the first anniversary of the 12-day war, Iran’s main negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Saturday that Iranians will stand until “final victory”. “Following the example of the heroic and oppressed martyrs of the 12-day war, we will stand to the last breath for the pride and final victory of our beloved Iran,” Ghalibaf posted on X.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israeli aims to weaken the Iranian nation failed during Israel’s 12-day war last June. Iran’s unity forced the adversary to accept a ceasefire, he said on Saturday.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that the agreement consisted of 14 points, the first of which is the lifting of the US blockade of Iranian ports. He said the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) calls for an end to hostilities across all fronts, including Lebanon, and an agreement not to initiate war or use force.
War diplomacy
Trump wrote on Truth Social that after a framework deal is signed, the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global oil supplies that Iran has blocked, would immediately be “open to all”. “The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” a post on Trump’s official Truth Social platform read on Saturday.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Saturday that the signing date was yet to be determined, but “it will not be tomorrow.” However, he added: “The possibility of this happening in the coming days cannot be ruled out.”
The “finalisation” of this agreement is expected “within the next 24 hours”, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Saturday on X, adding that it will be signed electronically, without going into further detail or specifying what this would involve.
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC, said the US president has suggested that the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran will be signed virtually. “Now, the US president’s schedule has been posted for Sunday. There is no mention of a virtual signing ceremony. However, it can be added,” she said.
Al Jazeera’s Almigdad Alruhaid, reporting from Tehran, said the path to a deal is closer than ever, but the final decision to sign the agreement has not yet been announced by Iranian officials. “It’s now been 24 hours since Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Iranians were reviewing the draft text of the memorandum of understanding,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who launched the war in tandem with the US in February, said Trump had promised him any agreement would include the removal of the enriched nuclear material.
In the US
The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Saturday that Iran had “launched multiple one-way attack drones in an attempt to strike commercial ships transiting the Strait [of Hormuz]”. It added that “US forces have downed all of them in recent hours.”
Democratic lawmakers have expressed scepticism over Trump’s plans, with one congressman describing the potential deal as “basically a surrender document”. “The President says the war is over. I hope that he is right,” Adam Schiff, senator for California, said on X. “But we have heard this before. Along with a raft of broken promises.”
In Lebanon, Israel
Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, reporting from Beirut, said Israeli attacks continue in Lebanon despite reports of a nearing Iran deal. “There were dawn air strikes in the town of Deir ez-Zahrani, which killed two people in the district of Nabatieh. The mayor of a town called Rihan in the district of Jezzine was killed this morning. And one person was killed in a cemetery just south of the city of Tyre,” she said. “Hezbollah has also said it has been targeting Israeli soldiers who have been trying to advance.”
Israel’s military says air sirens have sounded in the north of Israel following a “hostile aircraft infiltration”. It said “two impacts of suspicious aerial targets in Israeli territory were identified near the Israel-Lebanon border.”
The expected agreement has also prompted an early backlash in Israel, with some commentators saying it will further empower Iran. “The only event whose power outweighs the military victories we achieved in recent years over Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran is the political defeat we suffered against them immediately afterward,” Israeli columnist Ben Caspit wrote in Maariv.
