Mixed Messages Complicate Trump’s Iran Peace Deal Timeline

President Donald Trump and several of his top administration officials appeared to hedge on whether a peace deal with Iran would actually be signed Sunday, as the commander-in-chief asserted in a statement over the weekend.

Complicating the president’s efforts was a renewed barrage of airstrikes that Israel launched Sunday on Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. Trump quickly condemned the attack in a post on Truth Social.

“This morning’s attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran,” Trump wrote. “Let’s not blow it!”

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, began striking Israel soon after the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began, and Israel has launched significant attacks in Lebanon since. Iran says any peace deal must cover Lebanon but the Trump administration has struggled to develop a clear policy toward the country.

Trump doubled down on his prediction that the deal would be signed Sunday, though he added that he was “very unhappy” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Sunday phone call with Axios. The president told a reporter that Netanyahu “has no fucking judgment.”

Top administration officials would not confirm whether a peace deal would be signed Sunday — though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told CBS he thinks the agreement is “on track.”

“From all I know, we are on track. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” Hegseth said.

While U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz said Sunday morning he’s “confident” the peace deal will happen soon, he deferred to the White House when asked about the timing and logistics for signing the agreement.

“Well, the president has every intent for it to happen,” Waltz said on ABC’s “This Week,” blaming any delay on Iranian negotiators for shifting their position. “The Iranians are incredibly difficult negotiators, coupled with the fact that they‘re having a very hard time getting guidance from their supreme leader.”

The U.S. and Iran are set to sign the deal electronically in a virtual meeting with Pakistani and Qatari mediators on Sunday, according to a report from Axios.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that a “great settlement” with Iran was close after more than 100 days of conflict. The president announced the timing of the peace deal in a pinned post on Truth Social on Saturday.

“The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump wrote, claiming his administration has “a much different and better” relationship with Iran than previous presidents.

A senior Iranian official shared details about the pending peace deal with Reuters on Sunday, claiming that in exchange for Iran immediately reopening the Strait of Hormuz and halting the expansion of its nuclear program (as well as agreeing not to acquire a nuclear weapon), the U.S. will deliver economic relief to the country in the form of $25 billion in frozen assets.

A White House source familiar with the deal told NOTUS that the framework reported by Reuters “isn’t accurate” but did not provide additional details.

Trump has repeatedly stated that keeping Iran from having a nuclear weapon is one of the United States’ main goals — though Iran has maintained for decades that it has no plans to build or acquire any such weapons.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran who was killed at the start of the war in a joint U.S.-Israeli operation, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, against nuclear weapons in 2003. Although the agreement was not binding, it expanded upon the previous Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s stance on nuclear weapons during Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Citing the mixed messages from high-level Trump administration officials — and the dozens of previous times Trump has suggested that a deal would be inked soon — Democrats on Sunday shared their skepticism about the impending deal taking shape.

“We would have to take a look at what the ultimate resolution is, if there is one. Donald Trump has said 38 or 39 different times during the course of this war that it was about to come to an end, an agreement was about to be reached. That has never happened,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” citing a CNN analysis that found that Trump had stated a deal was close at hand dozens of times already.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) agreed with Trump’s call for Israel to back off its continued strikes on Lebanon, but expressed skepticism about any deal taking shape Sunday.

“I do agree with what the president said about standing down. It’s obvious that we’re negotiating with the Iranians at this point,” Kelly said on CBS. “I don’t know if this is a special day, and if we’re very close to a deal.”

Jeffries and Kelly criticized Trump for withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018. President Barack Obama finalized the JCPOA in 2015, but it was never codified by Congress, which allowed Trump to unilaterally abandon the agreement.

Obama’s deal delivered sanctions relief to Iranians in exchange for a massive reduction in Iran’s nuclear program.

In a preview of an exclusive interview with ABC set to air Wednesday, Obama defended the JCPOA and hit Trump for abandoning the framework that he said worked for the U.S. for “a long stretch of time.”

“It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place,” Obama said in the interview.