WASHINGTON (AP) — A tenuous ceasefire deal has halted the Iran war for two weeks, and negotiations for longer-term peace between the United States and Iran could begin as soon as Friday. But despite the apparent progress, neither seems able to agree on even the basic contours of the key issues being discussed.
Does Iran using its military to regulate the flow of ships on the Strait of Hormuz mean it still effectively controls the waterway? What about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium?
Does the ceasefire extend to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon? Might Iran press for a huge financial windfall, a lifting of international sanctions and even a drawdown of U.S. forces in the Middle East just to keep things on track?
The answers depend on which side you talk to. The U.S. and Iran, along with their allies, are offering different assessments.
Strait of Hormuz
President Donald Trump posted Tuesday night on his social media site that the ceasefire was subject to Iran agreeing to the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz,” the waterway leading out of the Persian Gulf through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is transported during peacetime.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday during a media briefing at the Pentagon that the strait was open. Iran announced hours later that the strait was closing again in response to Israel’s strikes in Lebanon.
Even if the strait does reopen, Iran says shipping traffic can resume only under its military management. That means Tehran can still make the case it is controlling the strait, and therefore retaining crucial global political and economic leverage, and could also charge ships stiff levies to use it, quickly generating billions in new revenue.
Uranium enrichment
Iran says its peace plan includes Washington’s “acceptance of enrichment” of uranium for Tehran’s nuclear program. But that would undermine a key Trump objective since the start of the war that Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump offered a different assessment, posting on Wednesday that a peace agreement would entail the U.S. working with Iran to “dig up” enriched uranium. The Trump administration says that material was buried as a result of joint U.S-Israeli strikes in June.
But what the Republican president said was different from what Hegseth said. The Pentagon chief said Tehran will either “give it to us voluntarily” or the U.S. might do “something like” its strikes last summer, when the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear sites.
Israeli attacks on Lebanon
Iran also says that ceasing hostilities in Lebanon, where Israel has dramatically stepped up attacks in recent weeks, will be part of larger peace negotiations.
That was consistent with what Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country is a key moderator in the peace process, said in announcing the ceasefire between Iran and the United States on X — that it would extend to Lebanon.
Trump is saying the opposite, telling PBS NewsHour in a brief interview on Wednesday that the ceasefire will not extend to Lebanon.
That lines up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which said in a statement that the two-week suspension of strikes in Iran does not include the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Other key points of possible peace plans
When Iran first offered a 10-point peace plan to halt the war on Monday, Trump called it a “very significant step” but also “not good enough.”
But then, about 90 minutes before his Tuesday night deadline to begin wide-scale U.S. attacks on Iran’s bridges and power grid, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire and described Iran’s proposal as a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”
“Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran,” Trump wrote, explaining why he was backing off his threats for massive attacks on nonmilitary targets.
What exactly has been agreed upon is not clear, however. The White House has not answered questions about what changed between Monday and Tuesday night that saw Trump suddenly warm to the Iranian peace plan.
Complicating matters is the fact that Iran has released a series of 10-point plans to guide negotiations, with many of the versions differing slightly, often seemingly depending on whether they were written in English or Farsi.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council says “the United States has, in principle, committed to” a series of key points — many of which seem to be nonstarters, considering long-standing U.S. positions.
It says the U.S. is ready to guarantee a lasting peace and no new attacks, a continuation of Iran’s control over the strait, acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium and removal of all U.S. economic and other sanctions from Iran. That would include, it says, restrictions on international entities doing business in that country, as well as U.N. Security Council resolutions against the government in Tehran.
The council also says the U.S. has agreed in principle to ending international oversight of Iran’s nuclear program, to compensate Iran for war damages, a ceasefire extending to Lebanon and a withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from the region.
That last one would be nothing short of extraordinary, given that the U.S. has maintained a network of military bases through the Persian Gulf for decades — since the conclusion of the 1991 Gulf War with Iraq. The lifting of all sanctions also seems like an unlikely prospect for the U.S. to agree to.
Asked how such proposals could be considered workable, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said only that “negotiations will continue.”
“The truth is that President Trump and our powerful military got Iran to agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations will continue.” Leavitt said in a statement.
Details are scarce about the US peace proposal
Trump rejected many of those points as “a FRAUD,” posting that the peace plan attributed to the council — and reported on by Iranian state media — was a “false Statement was linked to a Fake News site (from Nigeria).”
Instead, the U.S. has presented its own, 15-point peace plan. U.S. officials have only confirmed broad contours.
“There is only one group of meaningful ‘POINTS’ that are acceptable to the United States, and we will be discussing them behind closed doors during these Negotiations,” Trump posted Wednesday.
