(Bloomberg) — Persian Gulf nations and Pakistan stepped up efforts to transform a fragile truce in the Iran war into a permanent peace deal, with US President Donald Trump again signaling that the conflict may end soon.
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Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief and the favored interlocutor between the US and Iran, arrived in Tehran Friday for discussions on an accord with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi that lasted late into the night and continued on Saturday.
Munir also met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Araghchi held separate talks with his counterparts in Oman, Turkey, Qatar and Iraq, and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.
The ceasefire was agreed six weeks ago, temporarily halting fighting that erupted when the US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Iran responded with missile and drone attacks on countries in the Persian Gulf and further afield. Thousands of people were killed, the bulk of them in Iran.
A lasting peace deal has remained elusive so far, keeping global energy markets on edge and oil prices elevated above $100 a barrel. The United Arab Emirates has joined Qatar and Saudi Arabia in appealing to Trump to allow more time for negotiations, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Trump has veered between assurances that a peace accord was almost at hand and threats of new aerial assaults since the truce took effect. He told a rally in the state of New York on Friday the war will be over “soon” and “oil prices are going to tumble as soon as I finish up with Iran,” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there had been “slight progress” in negotiations.
“I don’t want to exaggerate it, but there’s been a little bit of movement, and that’s good,” Rubio told the media at a meeting of foreign ministers from members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Sweden on Friday.
Tasnim, Iran’s semi-official news agency, cited a source close to Tehran’s negotiating team as saying more progress had been made on some issues when compared to past talks, but no deal will be reached until all disputed matters are resolved.
“Trump has no choice but to accept the demands of the Iranian people and recognize Iran’s rights,” the semi-official Fars news agency cited Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesman for Iran’s defense ministry, as saying. “Trump’s disregard for US national interests, his alignment with the Israeli regime, and his arrogant behavior will lead to the US sinking deeper into the quagmire of war.”
Meanwhile, Axios and CBS News reported that Trump was preparing for a possible fresh round of strikes, although he hadn’t made a final decision.
“Our armed forces, during the ceasefire period, have rebuilt themselves in a way that if Trump acts recklessly and restarts the war, the response to the US will certainly be more decisive and more bitter than the first days of the war,” state-run IRIB News cited Ghalibaf as saying after his meeting with Munir.
Opposition to renewed hostilities has heightened among Americans upset about the sharp rise in gasoline prices. Those anxieties, reflected in several polls, have resonated on Capitol Hill, months before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
The rights to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway for global energy supplies that has remained largely shuttered since the war began, along with Iran’s nuclear program, have been major obstacles to diplomacy.
The US has repeatedly stressed that it won’t allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and wants Tehran to commit to ending the enrichment of uranium for at least a decade. Iran has publicly rejected that demand, while insisting that it has no intention of building an atomic bomb.
“A deal remains more likely than escalation, though by a narrow margin,” Eurasia Group said in a note. “If a deal is reached this weekend, it would likely serve as an interim arrangement extending the ceasefire by 30 days and creating space for additional rounds of talks on outstanding issues, including Iran’s nuclear program.”
Here’s more related to the Iran war:
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Inflation prospects are worsening in the absence of a Middle East peace deal and there is a strong argument in favor of the European Central Bank raising interest rates next month to preserve its credibility, according to Governing Council member Yannis Stournaras.
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Iran said 25 ships crossed Hormuz in the past day after obtaining permission, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency reported Saturday, citing a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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Rubio met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, with energy security high on the agenda. The South Asian nation has been particularly hard hit by soaring oil costs and supply disruptions stemming from the war, with diesel and gasoline prices rising three times in just over a week.
–With assistance from Eric Martin, Tooba Khan, Carla Canivete, Stanley James, Sam Kim, Chris Miller and Angela Cullen.
(Updates with details on talks from second paragraph, developments related to the war in bullet points.)
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