Trump calls a Situation Room meeting to decide on extending Iran ceasefire

President Donald Trump signaled Friday that he is moving closer to approving a deal to extend a ceasefire in Iran, announcing a Situation Room meeting to “make a final determination.”

Trump said in a social media post that some unspecified aspects of a deal “have been agreed to,” while also outlining what he described as his most important conditions. It was unclear whether Iran had agreed to them all, including the stipulation that the United States would unearth and destroy Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

Trump also said Iran must immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz, remove any remaining mines in the vital waterway and “agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb.”

He said that “no money will be exchanged, until further notice,” possibly a reference to calls by Iran for the U.S. to release the country’s frozen assets.

A White House official said Friday afternoon that the Situation Room meeting had concluded but did not provide further details.

Senior officials from the U.S. and Iran said earlier this week that they had reached a tentative agreement to suspend the monthslong war in the Middle East, launched by the U.S. and Israel with strikes on Iran in late February. Trump and his counterparts in Tehran have continued to review the framework in recent days.

The agreement in question is a memorandum of understanding that would extend the current ceasefire for another 60 days while the two sides iron out specifics of a plan to remove enriched uranium from Iran, among other goals, a senior U.S. official previously told The Washington Post.

An Iranian official briefed on the talks said Friday that Tehran still had not given final approval to the memorandum of understanding but that the two sides appeared close to an announcement.

The official said Tehran’s deep distrust of the Trump administration has made it difficult for Iran’s leadership to build support for the deal. Iran has been attacked militarily twice over the past year while engaged in negotiations with the United States, once by Israel last summer, launching a 12-day war, and again in late February by the United States and Israel.

That lack of trust also has complicated the sequencing of the deal, as both sides have demanded concessions up front during the first phase of the agreement. The Iranian official said Tehran was concerned that the United States would otherwise not adhere to its commitments, while U.S. officials have expressed similar skepticism about Iran.

Iran has demanded the unfreezing of billions in assets and the lifting of the U.S. blockade in the first phase of the deal, after which Iran would support mine-clearing operations that will allow the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, according to the official.

In a social media post Friday, chief Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said: “We have no trust in guarantees or words — only actions are the measure. No action will be taken before the other side acts.”

Iran, Ghalibaf said, would “seize concessions not through negotiations. We obtain them with our missiles.”

On Thursday evening, Vice President JD Vance said that the “Iranians want a deal” but that it was too early to know “when or if” an agreement would be reached. Vance said the two sides were “going back and forth on a couple of language points,” which included the “question of enrichment.”

A major point of contention has been whether Iran would agree to turn over its highly enriched uranium, which Trump has referred to as “nuclear dust.” Tehran says its nuclear program is solely for domestic energy, but the U.S. and Israel fear the fuel could be used for a weapon.

“We do think they’re negotiating in good faith,” Vance told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, after returning from a trip to speak to graduating Air Force Academy cadets in Colorado Springs.

Another sticking point has been whether a ceasefire would cover the fighting between Israel and Lebanon.

Military officials from those two countries were scheduled to meet at the Pentagon on Friday under U.S. supervision, with a separate round of political talks set for next week, an Israeli official told The Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who spoke to White House reporters Thursday, said “nothing is going to be on the table” until Iranian officials first agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows out of the Middle East and into the global economy.

A Pakistani official briefed on the talks said U.S. negotiators have agreed to lift their blockade on the Strait of Hormuz at the outset of the first phase of the agreement, as a confidence-building measure. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the news media.

The official said the last few days of talks have been aimed at “fine-tuning” language in the memorandum of understanding rather than bridging significant differences between the two sides.

Trump has repeatedly suggested in recent weeks that an agreement is near, only to revert to threats when the Iranians issue a denial. He has also made demands — saying various Arab countries must join the Abraham Accords, for example — that appear to have remote odds at best.

Trump’s renewed suggestions of an agreement Wednesday came after both sides exchanged drone and missile fire in the region in recent days, underscoring the fragile nature of the ceasefire first declared in April.

But the signals from both sides that a deal is possible have grown stronger in the past few days. The president on Wednesday said he believed that Iran was “starting to give us the things that they have to give us,” without elaborating.

“And if they do, that’s great, and if they won’t, then the man on my left is going to finish them off,” he said in a Cabinet meeting, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

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• Dan Lamothe, Gary Shih, Shaiq Hussain and Karen DeYoung contributed.