President Donald Trump has declared that Iran is on the cusp of signing an agreement that would see it abandon any pursuit of nuclear weapons and immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint through which a fifth of global oil passes. Speaking to journalists in the White House, Mr Trump said negotiations were proceeding “very well” and that a deal could be concluded as soon as this weekend. “They are now very close to signing,” he said, noting that after two weeks of discussion, the text was finalised.

The prospective accord, as outlined by American officials, would commit Tehran to forswear both the manufacture and acquisition of nuclear arms and to transfer its stockpile of enriched uranium to the United States. Mr Trump asserted that Iranian authorities had initially agreed to such a transfer, then reneged, but had now once again consented. He added that last year’s B-2 bomber strikes had destroyed underground enrichment and production sites, and that the economic pressure campaign had proved “more effective than military operations”. The president confirmed that shipping through Hormuz, disrupted for months by Iranian patrols and mining, would resume “immediately after the signing”.

Viewed from Tehran, however, the path to a final agreement is complicated by Iran’s insistence that the maritime issue cannot be divorced from the ongoing combat in Lebanon. Mr Trump acknowledged that Washington was attempting to separate the two dossiers, but Iranian officials have publicly maintained that any deal on Hormuz must be linked to a broader regional settlement. The distinction matters: while the US seeks a narrow, transactional fix to the shipping crisis, Iran appears to be leveraging it for wider concessions.

Analysts in Europe note that if signed, the agreement would represent a significant breakthrough, potentially extending the informal truce along the Israeli-Lebanese border and paving the way for a resumption of comprehensive nuclear negotiations. Yet considerable scepticism remains. The history of US-Iran diplomacy is littered with last-minute reversals, and it is unclear whether the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader is fully behind the concessions outlined by Mr Trump. For now, the world watches as the weekend deadline approaches, mindful that the difference between a deal and collapse may rest on a few contested paragraphs of text.