President Donald Trump signaled Saturday that some kind of agreement with Iran “will be announced shortly,” possibly bringing the 84-day military and economic conflict to an end.

“An Agreement has been largely negotiated, subject to finalization between the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the various other Countries,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, adding that details were still being finalized. “In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened.”

Trump said he had spoken with leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel about the deal, and the calls had gone well.

Speculation that a deal was imminent swirled earlier on Saturday as Trump huddled with his war cabinet at the White House after canceling plans to spend the weekend at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club and skipping his eldest son’s wedding. 

“I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time,” Trump wrote on social media Friday, shortly before the White House officially changed his weekend schedule. Trump did not elaborate on why he was returning to Washington Friday evening after a campaign stop for GOP Rep. Mike Lawler in southern New York state, nor did he address the situation during the rally.

“I built the greatest military my first four years, and I didn’t know I was going to be using it this much, but we’re using it. And there’s nobody like our equipment,” Trump told supporters in Rockland County. 

The commander in chief used several sets of public remarks this week to both float the notion that a deal could be coming soon and to threaten to restart U.S. military strikes inside Iran.

He struck that tone again on Friday in the Empire State. 

“Iran, their navy’s gone, their air force is gone, everything’s gone, their leaders are gone. And if you read the fake news, you’d think they’re doing just fine. They’re not doing just fine,” Trump said. “They want to settle so badly. We have the greatest military.”

The expected announcement of a deal comes as the Iran conflict and Trump’s handling of it have become unpopular in the U.S. Multiple polls show Trump is underwater with voters over the war and its economic tentacles, stemming from higher gasoline and diesel prices due to Iran essentially closing the Strait of Hormuz, a key global energy transitway.

Skepticism and concern

Media reports pointed to a potential memorandum of understanding as the most likely first announcement from the U.S., Iran and Pakistan, which has been the leading go-between trying to bring the two warring sides to a resolution.

But some Trump supporters on Saturday took to social media to warn against the framework being bandied in some circles on social media. 

“The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith — would be a disaster,” Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., wrote on X. “Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!”

Longtime Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also voiced concerns.

He worried that a deal with Iran could be perceived by other countries in the region to have allowed the Iranian regime to survive and become more powerful over time.

“A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the Strait in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids,” he posted on X.

Notably, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., told CQ Roll Call on Thursday that, given how the conflict has played out, any pact Trump might reach with Tehran would likely be substantively below that of the deal brokered by the Obama administration.

“There is no way, without massive numbers of troops on the ground, to reclaim the enriched uranium,” Warner said. “We’ve seen a leadership [in Iran] that’s more radical than before. The straits [of Hormuz], we’ve shown how vulnerable they are. And unfortunately, you’ve seen the missile capacity that’s been taken out wasn’t near what we said.”

“So, it may be the best we can do is to get observers back on the ground and a chance to monitor so that they would promise no further enrichment — but that would mean we would be back in a circumstance potentially not even as good as the JCPOA,” he said, using shorthand for the now-sacked Iran nuclear deal reached by the Obama administration, formerly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

That’s because “it won’t have groups like Russia and China as part of the [enrichment] monitoring group — and that’s after 14 Americans died, billions of dollars spent,” Warner added. “The president could declare victory tomorrow, and there’s still going to be gas prices that will get above five bucks.”

Mark Dubowitz, a prominent voice on Iran and the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan Washington-based think tank that is viewed as hawkish and right-of-center, said on X Saturday that the rumored deal under consideration is “much worse” than the 15-point plan proposed by Trump in March.

“If President Trump agrees to a 60-day ceasefire extension based on vague Iranian promises to ‘discuss’ nuclear issues, it’s game over. That pushes the crisis into late July or early August, when major military operations become far less likely ahead of the midterms,” he wrote.

If the U.S. cedes its military leverage, Iran will not agree to meaningful concessions related to its nuclear weapons program or restrictions on its ballistic missiles, said Dubowitz, a critic of the JCPOA. 

“Tehran will have won at the negotiating table what it lost on the battlefield,” he added.