In a speech at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on Friday night, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the United States has “knocked the hell out of Iran,” while claiming that Iran is "dying to settle."

Trump added that the United States "gave [Iran] a week off for a funeral, because we’re nice” ahead of Iran starting a dayslong funeral Saturday for the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei months after an airstrike killed him at the start of the war.

Footage showed Khamenei's coffin draped with the Iranian flag and topped with his black turban. It was placed, along with four other coffins of his slain family members, on a large black platform that resembled the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure at the center of Islam's holiest site in Mecca.

Khamenei's body is expected to be taken to Qom, Najaf and Kerbala, the great Shi'ite centers of Iran and Iraq, before being laid to rest on Thursday in Mashhad, home to the country's holiest pilgrim shrine.

-ABC News' Rashid Haddou

The latest round of indirect technical talks between the United States and Iran have concluded with "positive" progress, according to a statement posted on Thursday by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.

Qatar and Pakistan mediated the talks in Doha, Qatar.

"Parties have agreed to continue discussions over the coming period," the mediators said, according to the statement.

Another round of talks was expected to be scheduled "at the earliest possible time" after Tehran holds a state funeral for the former Iranian leader, Ali Khamenei, which is to begin on Friday.

-ABC News' Joe Simonetti

Vice President JD Vance continued to defend the administration’s position on Iran as negotiations to fully end the war appear to have stalled out, saying there would be no tolls in the Strait of Hormuz.

“I just want to be very clear here this is not going to end in a place where the Iranians are collecting tolls on ships going through the Strait of Hormuz,” Vance said in an interview with the conservative podcaster Michael Knowles.

"In fact, I feel quite confident that we're not gonna have a tolled Strait of Hormuz in the future," he added.

This comes as Iranian officials continue to insist the opposite.

"Passing through the Strait is free of charge only for 60 days. Iran will not give up its rights in the Strait of Hormuz under any circumstances. The Strait of Hormuz is valuable when traffic increases day by day, not less. We should not turn the Strait of Hormuz into our enemy," Iran's Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tuesday.

Vance dismissed the signals from Iran’s own government about the negotiations, saying that they were trying to posture for their domestic audience.

“What they're saying right now for the consumption of their domestic audience, it really doesn't matter. What matters is what's going to happen,” Vance said.

President Donald Trump previously warned that if talks fail, the U.S. could impose a toll on the critical shipping channel.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmael Baqaei said on Tuesday that no meeting with U.S. officials had been scheduled “at any level” in the coming days, pushing back on suggestions that talks could take place in Doha, Qatar, with negotiators from both sides in the city.

"What will take place in Doha tomorrow is a discussion regarding the implementation of certain provisions of the Memorandum of Understanding, including the release of Iran’s frozen assets,” he said. “These talks are being held with the Qatari side.”

On Lebanon, Baqaei said the U.S.'s commitment to ending the war "on all fronts" including Lebanon is binding under the MOU, and that Iran will judge U.S. compliance solely by the text of that agreement, regardless of any separate arrangements.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that a U.S. team was heading to Doha, Qatar, amid reports from Iranian state media claiming that there would be no negotiations between U.S. and Iranian teams there.

Trump indicated the team was heading to Doha to discuss Iran's nuclear program during the meeting on Tuesday.

"I think they've already left, or they're just about getting ready to leave. So we'll see how that goes," Trump said while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office. "But the meeting in Doha is going to be, perhaps important, perhaps not, we're gonna find out."

The president then said the war was "almost won militarily."

"It's really very simple. It's the denuclearization of Iran. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon and they're not gonna have a nuclear weapon," Trump said.

-ABC News' Nicholas Kerr