“President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the U.S. and Iran are on the cusp of a deal to end their conflict. The reality has proven more elusive — in part because of the nature of the negotiations themselves,” Bloomberg reports. “The latest instance came Thursday, when Trump claimed that a deal was imminent, telling reporters that an agreement could be signed as early as this weekend. Iran rejected Trump’s claims, with its semi-official Fars news agency reporting that the regime’s leaders had not approved any text with the US.”“While Trump’s penchant for overstatement, threats and enticements help explain the confusion on the state of the negotiations, there’s another reason a deal has been so hard to reach: the unwieldy way in which the US and Iran are actually carrying out their negotiations.”