CNN International's Frederik Pleitgen -- the CNN journalist was recently inside Iran -- is out with a report and I'll quote it verbatim:There has been outreach between the United States and Iran, initiated by Washington, in recent days but nothing that reached the level of full on negotiations, a senior Iranian source tells me. Messages have been received through various intermediaries to scope out whether an agreement to end the war, which is now in its fourth week, could be reached. The proposals being looked at are aimed not merely at achieving a ceasefire, but a concrete agreement to end the conflict between the US and Iran, the source added without going into further detail.The source refused to comment on US President Trump‘s public statements on the outreach and emphasized Iran's position has been always clear that Iran is ready to consider any viable proposal to deceively put an end to this war of choice imposed on Iran.The source said Iran is not asking for a meeting or direct talks with the United States but is willing to listen if a plan for a sustainable deal comes within reach that would preserve the national interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran. While Iran is ready to provide all the necessary guarantees that it will never develop nuclear weapons but is entitled to peaceful use of nuclear technology. The source stated that any propsal has to also include termination of all sanctions imposed on the Iranian peopleThis mirrors what Iran has been saying. Trump was out yesterday saying that 15-point plan was discussed but it's hard to shake the feeling that Trump was just trying to calm down markets and find a way out of his 48-hour ultimatum.Now the good news is that Trump does seem to want to end the war quickly and bring down oil prices and keep up stock prices, so that's worth something. We're clearly close to the top of his economic-pain chart. Ultimately, I think the way out for the US is to simply walk away and leave the cleaup of the Strait to others but that might be a situation that gives Iran even more leverage and hurts the US with its allies. In any case, US stocks managed to pull back to unchanged even as oil prices remain 4% higher so there is a real rush to front-run any kind of deal. This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.