The China Mail - Iran and US say deal closer than ever

But during weeks of halting negotiations -- marked by threats and exchanges of fire despite an April truce -- US President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that a deal was all but signed, only for talks to drag on.

And disagreements between the two sides persisted, with Iranian state media publishing a breakdown of what was purportedly on the table that was at odds with Washington's account.

"The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding has never been closer," Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote in a social media post, referring to the Pakistani capital that hosted previous US-Iran talks.

Trump -- who on Friday morning accused the Iranians of negotiating in bad faith and misrepresenting the terms that had been agreed -- posted a screenshot of Araghchi's message on his own feed just hours later.

Araghchi provided some details on the agreement in an interview with state television, saying it calls for the lifting of the US naval blockade of Iran's ports and unspecified changes to the administration of the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime trade route for oil and gas from the Gulf.

He also said the only way to deal with the country's enriched uranium -- which Washington alleges is part of a nuclear weapons programme -- "is to dilute it inside Iran."

- 'Not 100 percent' -

Disputing Trump's "bad faith" accusation, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said an agreement had now been reached with Washington "on most points".

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country has been a key mediator since the initial talks, confirmed that "a final, agreed-upon text of the peace deal has been reached".

"Peace has never been as close as it is now," Sharif said, while acknowledging "incessant misinformation" surrounding the deal.

A senior US official also voiced optimism that the parties would be "signing this agreement over the next few days".

"If I were to give you a confidence that we were going to be signing this agreement, I maybe would have said 75 percent this morning, it's probably more like 80-85 percent now, but it's not 100 percent," the official told reporters in a call.

The Swiss foreign ministry on Friday said it had been in contact with both the United States and Iran, and had "proposed Switzerland as the venue for a possible signing, should the parties agree to it".

But Araghchi said that upon finalisation, a draft deal with the United States would be signed "remotely", adding that this could happen "in the coming days."

US ally Israel has said that Trump had promised it that any agreement would see Iran stripped of its enriched nuclear material, but Tehran's official IRNA news agency said this was not even on the table.

- 'Benefits will flow' -

According to IRNA's account, after an initial agreement is signed, Iran and the United States would hold 60 more days of talks and "Iran's right to enrich uranium and the retention of enriched material... will be emphasised with a view to their inclusion in the final agreement".

Beyond this, according to IRNA, Iran would insist on managing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has blockaded since the outbreak of the war, causing major disruptions to the global economy.

On Friday, Iran's Mehr news agency, quoting a source close to the country's negotiating team, said the deal would also see the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

But those details clashed with a summary offered by a senior White House official, who told AFP Iran had agreed to dismantle its nuclear programme, destroy its enriched uranium stockpile and reopen the strait -- and that Tehran would not see any of its frozen funds returned until it had honoured these commitments.

US Vice President JD Vance likewise said Iran was "not receiving any cash, and no funds are being released for simply signing a deal or attending a meeting".

But, he added, if "Iran meets its obligations, then economic benefits will flow to them and to the entire region".

burs-wd/md

P.Ho--ThChM