Intl desk: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says a “peace deal” between US and Iran has been reached and is “now in place” with the signing ceremony scheduled for Friday in Switzerland.
US President Donald Trump says the agreement with Iran “is now complete” and announces an end to Washington’s naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi says the text of the deal has been “finalised” and war will end on all fronts, including Lebanon.
Iran’s military says the Iranian people have proved that the US and Israel had “no choice but to accept defeat and surrender”.
Writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump stated, “The agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete.” He also congratulated everyone involved in the negotiations.
Trump further announced that he was authorizing the Strait of Hormuz to be fully reopened for toll-free navigation and had ordered the immediate lifting of the blockade imposed by the US Navy.
“The world’s ships, start your engines. Let the oil flow,” Trump wrote.
In a subsequent post, he clarified that the Strait of Hormuz would officially reopen to commercial shipping on Friday, June 19, following the signing of the agreement.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also confirmed the deal in a message posted on X (formerly Twitter). He said both sides had agreed to immediately and permanently halt military operations on all fronts.
Prime Minister Sharif added that, following agreement on the memorandum of understanding, mediators would organize several pre-implementation meetings this week. These meetings will focus on the technical details of implementing the agreement.
He reiterated that the formal signing ceremony would take place in Switzerland on Friday and thanked Qatar for its assistance in facilitating the negotiations.
Iran has not yet officially announced the agreement. However, the country’s state media has reported the development.
Citing Sharif’s statement, Iranian state television announced that an agreement had been reached between Iran and the United States.
According to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said that negotiations on a final agreement would continue for 60 days after verifying whether the United States had fulfilled its commitments under the deal.
It’s a big day for Trump, given the fact that he needed to meet this deadline for a deal.
And it was almost derailed by his supposed ally in the Middle East, Israel, which, ironically, isn’t much of a birthday gift for Trump [from Israel].
But the fact of the matter is that Trump believes that he and his team were able to keep this on track, along with other allies, like Qatar and Pakistan.
But the optics are without question critically important for the US president.
He needs to deliver for not only the American people, but members of his own Republican Party, who were fighting back criticism that Trump made things worse, not better, given the fact that he withdrew from the JCPOA that was negotiated under Democratic President Barack Obama in 2015.
Many argued that he had not gotten anything extra from Iran, and, in fact, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and that blockade only drove up the price of oil, and then turned up the cost for consumer goods, as well as energy prices and the cost of a home.
So as a result, the US president was under pressure to deliver and meet his deadline, which he says he did, which he hopes will translate to accomplishments, given the fact that the looming November elections are going to be difficult for Republicans.
Source: News Agencies and Al Jazeera
