President Donald Trump has repeatedly declared Iran and the US are on the verge of agreeing a deal to end the Middle East war, but a litany of sticking points have delayed finalizing an accord and will complicate its implementation, analysts say. Trump has been widely mocked in US and Iran for frequently insisting an end to the conflict was imminent even as negotiations dragged on for weeks, with US network CNN saying he had used phrases like "very close to a deal" or in the "final throes" of talks on 39 occasions. In what has become a familiar pattern, Trump on Thursday withdrew a threat of renewed strikes on Iran and said a deal could be signed in the coming days, only for Iran's foreign ministry to respond by saying it "has not reached a final conclusion on the agreement". Arash Azizi, lecturer at Yale University, told AFP that one reason the deal has taken so long is that the Iranian side believed "they could hold out to get better terms" after not capitulating during the conflict. Trump, meanwhile, "could hardly stomach" releasing Iran's frozen assets -- a key demand of Tehran -- and also risked facing accusations the accord would be more favorable to Iran than the 2015 nuclear deal he pulled out of during his first term, he added. Trump "had to accept that his initial gambit of causing an Iranian capitulation by sheer military force didn't work and he had to settle for something much less", said Azizi. Both Iran and the United States would appear to have vested interests in ending a conflict that saw five weeks of all-out war, paused by an uneasy ceasefire on April 8. The US-Israeli war has become increasingly unpopular in the US, even among the president's core supporters, with Trump mindful of the looming US midterm elections. A deal could also see Tehran win the security guarantees and recognition it has long craved from the US and ensure the personal safety of its own leadership, after former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and several top officials were killed in the first phase of the war. But any negotiation -- in this case mediated by Pakistan as well as Qatar -- between two foes who have been sworn enemies since shortly after the 1979 revolution was never going to be easy. - 'Frozen war' with 'flare-ups' - Iran's new leadership structure after the killing of Ali Khamenei has likely proved problematic, with the extent of the power wielded by his successor and son Mojtaba Khamenei still unclear. He is said by Iranian officials to have been wounded and has yet to appear in public. Trump's own pronouncements have also changed with startling rapidity, most notably on Thursday when he threatened to hit Iran "very hard" before predicting that a "great settlement" was near. Trump, in a Truth Social post Friday, appeared to again be losing patience, describing the Iranian side as "very dishonorable people to deal with". "Trump has neither a clear strategic objective nor a credible exit strategy for extricating the United States from the war with Iran," said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute (AGSI). He said a key obstacle was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has opposed any Iran-US deal and on Friday again vowed "Iran will not have nuclear weapons". The Iranian authorities, meanwhile, have "sensed Trump's reluctance to enter the midterm election season burdened by an unpopular war", and seek above all an enduring peace without US aggression, said Alfoneh. "The conflict has already taken on the characteristics of a frozen war, punctuated by periodic flare-ups," he added. - 'Tremendous leverage' - Iran has always insisted that any deal include Lebanon, where Israel has been attacking the Tehran-backed group Hezbollah, which has been further weakened but not eradicated. A White House official said on Friday that Iran had agreed to dismantle its nuclear program, which the West fears is aimed at making a nuclear weapon -- a commitment that has yet to be confirmed by Tehran. Critical will be the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz shipping bottleneck, which Iran blockaded at the start of the war in a move that caused global energy prices to surge. Iran "will not forget the tremendous leverage it gained by closing it," Thomas Juneau, professor at the University of Ottawa, wrote in a study for London-based think tank Chatham House. "It will not hesitate to consider closing the Strait again if it perceives it to be necessary."
