What we know and don’t know about the emerging deal to end the Iran war

The Unit­ed States and Iran ap­pear to be clos­ing in on a deal to end the war and open the Strait of Hor­muz. U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Mon­day that ne­go­ti­a­tions are “pro­ceed­ing nice­ly,” while re­it­er­at­ing his warn­ing that fight­ing would re­sume if no deal is reached.

It is not clear when or how the deal might be fi­nal­ized and when its var­i­ous parts will take ef­fect. De­tails come from two re­gion­al of­fi­cials and a U.S. of­fi­cial who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the sen­si­tive ne­go­ti­a­tions.

An Iran­ian del­e­ga­tion led by par­lia­ment speak­er Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf trav­eled to Qatar on Mon­day as part of talks, though it wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear what would be dis­cussed. Qal­ibaf led his­toric face-to-face talks with Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance in Pak­istan last month.

Iran’s For­eign Min­istry spokesman, Es­mail Baghaei, said that while un­der­stand­ings have been reached on “a large por­tion of the is­sues,” there was still work to be done. “To say that this means an agree­ment is on the verge of be­ing signed is not some­thing any­one can claim,” he told re­porters.

Here’s what we know and don’t know:

The war would end

In the 12 weeks since the U.S. and Is­rael launched the war with at­tacks that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei and oth­er top of­fi­cials, Tehran has in­sist­ed that any deal fo­cus on end­ing the fight­ing on all fronts. That in­cludes Lebanon, where the Iran­ian-backed Hezbol­lah mil­i­tant group has been fight­ing Is­rael since two days in­to the war.

A frag­ile cease­fire has held since April 7, de­spite oc­ca­sion­al drone and mis­sile at­tacks on the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and some ex­changes of fire in the Strait of Hor­muz. A more per­ma­nent truce would al­low for glob­al ship­ping, in­clud­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 20% of the world’s oil, to be­gin flow­ing through the strait again. It al­so would al­low the re­build­ing of en­er­gy and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture in the re­gion.

Both re­gion­al of­fi­cials said the draft deal in­cludes an end to the war be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah, as well as a com­mit­ment to not in­ter­fere in the do­mes­tic af­fairs of coun­tries in the re­gion. That’s a ref­er­ence to Iran’s sup­port for prox­ies, in­clud­ing Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hamas mil­i­tants in Gaza and Shi­ite armed groups in Iraq.

The U.S. wants Is­rael to have a free hand to re­spond to what they view as threats in Lebanon, while Iran re­jects it, one re­gion­al of­fi­cial said. The U.S. of­fi­cial said the deal would guar­an­tee Is­rael’s right to act against im­mi­nent threats in self-de­fense.

The Strait of Hor­muz would re­open grad­u­al­ly

The stat­ed ob­jec­tives of the U.S. and Is­rael were to dis­man­tle Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram, curb its mis­sile pro­gram and end its sup­port for armed prox­ies.

But Iran’s choke­hold on the Strait of Hor­muz, which was open to in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping be­fore the war, quick­ly shot to the top of glob­al con­cerns as hun­dreds of ships car­ry­ing oil, nat­ur­al gas, fer­til­iz­er and oth­er sup­plies were strand­ed, caus­ing a spike in prices far be­yond the re­gion.

Un­der the emerg­ing agree­ment, the strait would grad­u­al­ly re­open in par­al­lel with the U.S. end­ing the block­ade of Iran’s ports it im­posed on April 17, the re­gion­al of­fi­cials said. The block­ade has lim­it­ed Iran’s abil­i­ty to ship its oil and bring in bad­ly need­ed cash for its long-suf­fer­ing econ­o­my.

The U.S. would al­low Iran to sell its oil through sanc­tions waivers, said one of the of­fi­cials, who has been briefed on the ne­go­ti­a­tions. Sanc­tions re­lief and the re­lease of bil­lions of dol­lars in frozen Iran­ian funds would be ne­go­ti­at­ed dur­ing a 60-day pe­ri­od, the of­fi­cial said.

Iran would give up its stock­pile of high­ly en­riched ura­ni­um

Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram and in­ter­na­tion­al con­cerns over its pos­si­ble pur­suit of a nu­clear weapon un­der­lie the ten­sions. The U.S. and Is­rael have con­sid­ered high­ly com­plex mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions to go in and take out its high­ly en­riched ura­ni­um.

Un­der the po­ten­tial deal, Tehran would agree to give up that stock­pile, ac­cord­ing to the re­gion­al of­fi­cials. One of­fi­cial, with di­rect knowl­edge of the ne­go­ti­a­tions, said how Iran would give it up would be sub­ject to fur­ther talks over the 60-day pe­ri­od. Some would like­ly be di­lut­ed and the rest trans­ferred to a third coun­try, the of­fi­cial said. Rus­sia has of­fered to take it.

A U.S. of­fi­cial con­firmed the 60-day pe­ri­od and said if Iran doesn’t give up its stock­pile, there will be no sanc­tions re­lief.

Baghaei, the Iran­ian spokesper­son, said “the fo­cus of the ne­go­ti­a­tions is on end­ing the war, and at this stage we are not dis­cussing the de­tails of the nu­clear is­sue.”

Iran has 440.9 kilo­grams (972 pounds) of ura­ni­um that is en­riched up to 60% pu­ri­ty, a short, tech­ni­cal step from weapons-grade lev­els of 90%, ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency.

Iran says it has an “in­alien­able” right to nu­clear tech­nol­o­gy while in­sist­ing its pro­gram is peace­ful. On Sun­day, Pres­i­dent Ma­soud Pezeshkian told state TV they were ready “to as­sure the world that we are not af­ter a nu­clear weapon.”

What ap­pears to be miss­ing

“Ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic of Iran are pro­ceed­ing nice­ly!” Trump wrote on so­cial me­dia Mon­day. “It will on­ly be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Bat­tle­front and shoot­ing, but big­ger and stronger than ever be­fore — And no­body wants that!”

De­spite the claims of progress, sev­er­al is­sues ap­pear to be un­set­tled, in­clud­ing whether Iran would be able to en­rich ura­ni­um and to what lev­el, and the fate of its mis­sile pro­gram, which Is­rael in par­tic­u­lar views as a ma­jor threat.

While the Unit­ed States and Is­rael en­tered the war with the stat­ed hope of see­ing Ira­ni­ans rise up against their gov­ern­ment af­ter na­tion­wide protests ear­ly in the year, any dis­cus­sion of lead­er­ship change in Tehran ap­pears to be out.

As for Iran’s past stat­ed aims dur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, there ap­pears to be no men­tion of any with­draw­al of U.S. forces from the re­gion, or for repa­ra­tions for the dam­age the war has caused. —CAIRO (AP)

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Sto­ry by SAMY MAGDY, DAR­LENE SU­PERVILLE and CARA AN­NA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Dar­lene Su­perville re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton and An­na from Lowville, New York.