Trump cancels Iran strikes, says peace deal could come this weekend

Trump abruptly canceled planned strikes on Iran after saying progress in talks had made a peace deal possible as soon as this weekend, a move he said could reopen shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The shift came after he had warned he would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and take “total control” of its oil and gas industries, underscoring how quickly the rhetoric had swung while the underlying terms remained unsettled.

Trump said the deal could be signed in Europe and suggested Vice President JD Vance could sign for the United States. He also said significant points had been approved at the highest level of Iranian leadership and that discussions had been endorsed in concept and in great detail by the United States, Israel and other regional allies. If it holds, the agreement would be a major diplomatic breakthrough in a three-month war that has killed thousands and driven global energy prices sharply higher.

The most concrete evidence of progress, however, was still partial. Three Iranian sources said a political understanding had been reached, but negotiators were still working through the mechanics of releasing tens of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian oil revenues held in foreign banks. Those sources said unresolved questions included Iran’s nuclear program and its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, two issues that go to the core of any lasting settlement.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said Tehran had not approved the text of any agreement, cutting against Trump’s claim that final points had already been accepted by Iranian leadership. That gap between political signaling and signed text matters: without a documented accord, the proposed opening could prove temporary, especially if the hardest issues are pushed into later rounds of talks.

The stakes extend well beyond the battlefield. Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would reopen as soon as the deal was signed, and the United States has been blocking ships entering or leaving Iranian ports since mid-April. Any easing of that choke point would matter immediately for oil flows, shipping insurance and energy prices across Asia, Europe and the Gulf.

Even so, the conflict remained volatile. Two days of back-and-forth attacks between the United States and Iran had already pushed the Middle East closer to full-scale war, and Trump’s retreat from strikes looked less like a settled peace than a test of whether diplomacy could outrun military escalation. Republican critics were likely to press for any deal to shut off Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon, a political pressure point Trump knows well after withdrawing the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement in 2018.