As the weekend approaches, the United States and Iran appear to be close to a deal to end their seven-week war.
Then President Donald Trump did what his staff has repeatedly said he would not do: He appeared to try to negotiate through the media, posting about ongoing talks on social media and speaking to several reporters by phone on Friday morning, where Pakistani intermediaries updated him on ongoing talks with Iranian officials in Tehran.
He claimed Iran had agreed to a series of terms, which sources familiar with the negotiations said had not yet been finalized. He also claimed that Tehran had agreed to many of the United States’ most controversial demands, including agreeing to hand over enriched uranium and declaring that the war was coming to an end.
Iranian officials have outwardly denied many of those claims and denied they were preparing for another round of talks, quickly dampening optimism about a deal. Now, it’s unclear where the peace talks will go.
Some Trump officials privately acknowledged to CNN that the president’s public comments were detrimental to the negotiations, citing their sensitivity and the Iranians’ deep distrust of the United States. To add insult to injury, U.S. officials suspect there are differences between Iran’s negotiating team, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, raising questions about who could ultimately sign the deal.
“The Iranians don’t like it when the U.S. president negotiates through social media and makes it look like they’ve signed off on issues they haven’t agreed to and issues that are unpopular with people at home,” a person familiar with the matter told CNN, adding that the Iranians were particularly concerned about appearing weak.
Among the president’s statements: Trump told Bloomberg that Iran has agreed to suspend its nuclear program “indefinitely.” He told CBS News that Tehran “agrees to everything” and will work with the United States to remove its enriched uranium. He told Axios that the meeting “will probably happen over the weekend,” adding, “I think we’ll have a deal in the next day or two.”
The fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran was tested again on Sunday when a U.S. guided-missile destroyer opened fire on and seized an Iranian cargo ship after it tried to break a U.S. naval blockade in the Gulf of Oman, further angering the Iranians.
Now, as a two-week ceasefire approaches, Trump once again faces a decision: whether to accept a deal, even an imperfect one, or escalate a conflict he has said is now over.
By Monday, Iranian officials’ resistance to more talks appeared to be waning. But the contours of any pending agreement remain unclear.
“Thanks to President Trump’s negotiating prowess, the United States has never been closer to a good deal with Iran, unlike the terrible deal struck by the Obama administration,” White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said. “Anyone who cannot see President Trump’s long-term strategy is either stupid or willfully ignorant.”
Trump has set several red lines for negotiations, including that Iran freeze its uranium enrichment activities and hand over its stockpile of near-bomb-grade material. Tehran, meanwhile, is insisting that it be allowed to maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz while demanding that the United States lift sanctions.
According to people familiar with the matter, in the first round of negotiations, U.S. negotiators proposed a 20-year suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities. Iran offered a five-year pause, but the United States rejected it, according to a U.S. official.
A recent Iranian proposal would involve a 10-year moratorium on enrichment, followed by an additional 10 years, with Iran agreeing to limit enrichment to well below weapons-grade levels, according to a person familiar with the matter. At the same time, Trump told reporters that he did not want to increase his wealth indefinitely and even opposed a 20-year pause.
The Trump administration is also considering unfreezing Iranian assets worth $20 billion as part of ongoing negotiations with Tehran, CNN previously reported. The move was conditional on Iran handing over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
The flexibility of the parties’ terms will ultimately determine whether an agreement can be reached. The top priority for Trump is not to agree to a deal comparable to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an Iran nuclear deal he withdrew from in 2018 and has long derided as weak.
At the very least, negotiators hope to reach a framework understanding between the United States and Iran that will lead to more detailed talks on the details of a deal in the coming weeks. However, the approach has its critics, who warn that Iran could drag out discussions to drag out time because it is unearthing some of its missile systems that were buried during the course of the war.
Trump insisted on Monday that he felt no pressure to reach a deal despite the war’s growing unpopularity with the American public and its role in rising oil prices.
“I don’t feel any pressure, but it will all happen, and relatively quickly!” he wrote in the “Truth Society”.
As of Monday afternoon, it was unclear whether any advisers shared the president’s concerns that his tendency to post could hurt negotiations. As of noon, he had posted multiple posts about the war on Truth Social, totaling more than 900 words.
His public comments have only continued to add to the uncertainty surrounding the negotiations.
On Sunday morning, Trump told a series of callers that Vice President Vance would not participate in this round of talks, citing unspecified security concerns. Meanwhile, two top officials from his administration – U.N. Ambassador Mike Walz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright – appeared on television to say Vance would actually lead the delegation to Islamabad, as he had done in the first round of meetings.
It turns out they were right and Trump was wrong. Asked what happened, a White House official told CNN: “Things have changed.”
A day later, Trump provided another confusing update, this time on the whereabouts of his No. 2. He told a reporter from the New York Post that Vance was in the air and preparing to land in Pakistan within hours for talks. Moments later, Vance’s motorcade – with the vice president inside – arrived at the West Wing.
“We expect the delegation to depart soon,” a White House official explained.
Vance now plans to leave Washington on Tuesday for the talks, which Trump said on Sunday would take place Monday night, people familiar with the plans said.
But negotiations are now expected to begin in Islamabad on Wednesday morning. Sources warned in understatement that the situation remained “volatile”.
So is the fate of the two-week ceasefire, which is set to expire. The exact timing of Trump’s deadline also appears to have changed, based on Trump’s phone conversation with reporters on Monday. He originally announced a ceasefire at 6:32 pm ET on April 7, and announced a two-week ceasefire in Washington on Tuesday night.
But Trump told Bloomberg the truce would end “Wednesday evening, Washington time,” allowing for an additional 24 hours of negotiations before he must choose whether to follow through on threats to blow up Iranian bridges and power plants, which could constitute a war crime. He added that it was “extremely unlikely” that he would extend the deadline further.
But he has repeatedly argued over whether to agree to extend the ceasefire agreement. In interviews with reporters last week, he was asked five times whether he would extend the ceasefire and gave three different answers:
“If there is no deal, the fighting will start again,” he made clear at one point. Later, he said he would offer an extension if necessary: ​​”If we need to, I will do that.” In another answer, he said the question was moot given the state of the negotiations: “We’ll see. I don’t know if we have to do that. Ideally, we wouldn’t.”
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