White House 85% sure Iran deal will be signed as optimism grows but not 100%

WASHINGTON — A senior administration official started the day giving an Iran peace plan a 75% shot but upped the odds to 85% by Friday afternoon — as the White House sought to calm concerns that President Trump could sign a bad deal.“I’m calling 75% confidence that we’re going to be signing this agreement soon,” the senior official told reporters in a small-group morning call around 10 a.m.on the heels of Trump’s Thursday afternoon announcement that the plan was “approved” by Iranian leaders.Hours later, the same US official gave even more optimistic projections.“We do expect to be signing this agreement over the next few days.

I can’t give you an exact date,” the senior Trump aide told a larger group of journalists in a 1 p.m.briefing.“If I were to give you a confidence that we were going to be signing this agreement, I maybe would have said 75% this morning.

It’s probably more like 80-85% now, but it’s not 100%,” he said.The official pegged lingering doubts on internal divisions within Iran.“Their system is very complicated.

Most of the people that we’ve been speaking to, and most of the people who have authority within their system want to sign this deal, but not everybody, and those internal fractures are sort of working themselves out as they continue to try to get to a point where they can say yes to the deal,” the official said.For months, Trump has claimed that Iranian officials have agreed to his core demands that the country relinquish its highly enriched uranium and agree not to take further steps toward developing a nuclear weapon — and in all prior instances, the deal wasn’t inked, as Trump cited back-tracks.Friday featured yet another rollercoaster of perceptions about the fate of the burgeoning agreement, which is expected to result in the quick reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.The semi-official Mehr News Agency on Friday morning released a 14-point alleged deal, claiming that the US would release $24 bi...