Pakistan says US, Iran nearing deal despite new threats and hardened demands

Pakistan’s defense minister says US and Iran closing in on a deal, even as the two sides trade threats and issue demands for compensation.

By World Israel News Staff

Pakistan’s defense minister said the US and Iran appear close to reaching an agreement, offering a strikingly optimistic assessment of negotiations even as Tehran and Washington publicly hardened their positions and fresh attacks on shipping underscored the continuing risk of escalation.

“Things are shaping up again in favor of a peace arrangement or a deal,” Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Bloomberg in Islamabad on Tuesday.

Asif said recent developments suggested the diplomacy had moved substantially closer to a breakthrough.

“The signals in the last two three days are that we are close to some sort of an arrangement,” he said.

Pakistan has played a central mediating role between Washington and Tehran throughout the conflict.

Pakistan and Qatar helped broker a memorandum of understanding between the two sides in June that was intended to create a 60-day negotiating window for a permanent agreement, though subsequent indirect negotiations stalled and the fighting later resumed.

Asif’s comments came amid a notably more pessimistic public picture from both sides.

Iranian officials said Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed unless Washington accepted Tehran’s conditions for ending the conflict.

Mohsen Rezaei, a senior Iranian security official, said those demands included the release of frozen Iranian assets and an end to conflicts involving Iranian allies elsewhere in the Middle East.

“As long as America does not change its behaviour and does not accept Iran’s conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened,” Rezaei said, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

Iran had already expanded its demands over the weekend.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said an agreement with Oman governing shipping lanes through Hormuz was in its “final stages,” but insisted that completing the maritime arrangement would not itself be enough for Iran to reopen the waterway.

Tehran has demanded US compensation for damage from the war, the lifting of sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian funds and an end to US military pressure against Iran and its regional allies.

The US and Iran are not currently conducting direct negotiations, according to Araqchi, although he acknowledged that messages continue to pass through intermediaries.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, added a major US demand of his own this week, calling for Iran to compensate Americans killed or seriously wounded in attacks he blamed on Tehran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded,” Trump wrote.

Trump also demanded compensation for relatives of Iranians killed by the Islamic Republic during anti-government protests and said he had ordered US negotiators to include the issue in future discussions with Tehran.

The competing compensation demands appear to add another layer to negotiations already complicated by disagreement over Hormuz, sanctions, frozen Iranian funds and the future of the US naval blockade.

Trump has nevertheless continued to leave open both diplomatic and military paths.

In an Axios interview Sunday, he said the administration was “low-keying it” with Iran and was allowing economic pressure to work rather than immediately returning to large-scale combat.

“We are only semi-negotiating with them,” Trump said, pointing to Iran’s severe economic difficulties. He added that he expected the confrontation ultimately to be resolved, describing it as resembling “a chess game.”

By Tuesday, Trump was again projecting confidence, telling reporters that “Iran is going fine, going just absolutely fine” and asserting that the US controls the Strait of Hormuz.

But in a separate interview he also said he could continue allowing economic pressure to weaken Tehran or strike Iran “really, really hard” if necessary.

The diplomatic maneuvering is taking place while violence continues around two of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.

A suspected Houthi attack on the Egyptian-owned cargo vessel Tihamah in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait killed four crew members Tuesday, according to Yemen’s Transport Ministry, while two Yemeni rescuers were also killed.

Reuters reported that they were the first shipping deaths attributed to the Iran-aligned Houthis since the current Iran war began.

Separately, the US military said a Navy helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at a Panama-flagged cargo ship after it ignored orders to stop while allegedly violating the US blockade of Iranian ports.

The Strait of Hormuz remains at the heart of the confrontation. Before the war, roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments passed through the waterway.

Iran has severely restricted traffic since the US and Israel began attacking Iran in February.

A proposed arrangement negotiated among Iran, Oman and the US would establish new shipping rules and could give Tehran a degree of control over vessels entering the Gulf that it did not possess before the war.

Pakistani and Qatari mediators had previously expected that arrangement to be announced, but additional Iranian conditions delayed it.