"Things Shaping Up In Favour Of Peace": Pak Says US-Iran Deal May Be Near

Pakistan's defense minister said the US and Iran are "close to some sort of arrangement" over the Strait of Hormuz, even after both sides appeared to toughen their positions in the long-deadlocked negotiations. 

"Things are shaping up in favor of peace," Khawaja Asif told reporters in Islamabad on Tuesday, without giving details of any breakthrough. Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi arrived in Tehran to hold talks with his Iranian counterpart, the Islamic Republic's semi-official Iranian Students' News Agency reported.

Talks between Iran and Oman about reopening Hormuz to some maritime shipping have reached an advanced stage, Al Jazeera reported earlier, citing a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson. Pakistan has been mediating the conflict, alongside Qatar.   

The upbeat assessments, however, came after US President Donald Trump toughened his stance on Monday, saying Tehran should pay reparations for those killed in attacks linked to the Islamic Republic as well as in domestic protests. His comments came in response to a series of demands laid out by Iran over the weekend, including compensation for US violations of a now-lapsed interim peace deal agreed by the sides in June.  

A White House official said Trump believes he's in a strong negotiating position and is in no rush to secure a deal, but declined to characterize the state of talks. The US sees Iran's demands constantly shifting and believes Tehran faces mounting economic pressure and factional infighting, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide insight into the administration's thinking.

While Iranian officials have signaled that Tehran and Oman may be nearing an agreement, it remains unclear whether such a deal would lead to an immediate and full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, or what conditions Iran may seek to impose on traffic through the waterway.

Mohsen Rezaee, the newly appointed secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, appeared to underscore that distinction, saying any agreement with Oman on control over the waterway would remain separate from the closure of the strait, according to a report by state-run IRIB. 

Iran conveyed additional conditions to Washington through intermediaries, alongside demands that the US end the war and unfreeze blocked Iranian assets, IRIB cited Rezaee as saying. The comments followed a meeting with China's ambassador to Iran, Cong Peiwu, in Tehran.

Oil edged up on Tuesday, with US crude settling near $83 a barrel, as traders assessed the latest developments in the Middle East and the prospect that a deal to re-open the strait to shipping may not be imminent. 

"The mediators are trying to put things on the right track again, but it's easier said than done," said Ali Vaez, a deputy program director at the International Crisis Group.

"The danger is that Washington may see Iranian compliance as the prerequisite for implementing the MoU, while Tehran sees American implementation as the prerequisite for resuming negotiations - recreating precisely the sequencing trap that helped unravel the agreement in the first place," he added.

Iran will almost certainly reject Trump's latest demands, which the US leader said will be included "firmly into any, and all, future negotiations." The back-and-forth appeared to reduce the chance that the warring parties will be able to agree to any immediate pact on the waterway, where around a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas flowed before the conflict began on February 28. 

In a sign of ongoing tensions, a US Navy helicopter fired missiles at a Panama-flagged cargo ship that attempted to run the American blockade of Iranian ports early Tuesday, US Central Command announced. The shot aimed at the vessel's engine room was intended to disable its steering, Central Command said. 

The UK navy said it received a report on Tuesday of an incident involving a container ship and military forces in the Gulf of Oman, without providing further details. It was also informed of an incident off Yemen's Red Sea coast in which a cargo vessel reported being hit by an unknown projectile, resulting in casualties.

European diesel futures had surged more than 10% as refineries in Libya and Russia came under attack, further tightening the market for the fuel considered the workhorse of the global economy. Saudi Arabia extinguished a fire at its Jazan oil refinery early Sunday, the country's energy ministry said, with Yemen's Houthi militants claiming an attack on the facility hours later. 

"The region cannot remain indefinitely in a state of neither war nor peace," Anwar Gargash, senior diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, wrote in a post on X. "Its stability and the future of its peoples require clarity in vision and direction." 

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