Sen. Chris Murphy said Tuesday that President Trump has misrepresented the state of diplomacy with Iran for months, reacting to a Bloomberg report that Qatar had circulated draft language for a possible short-term deal to restart U.S.-Iran talks. “A ‘possible’ deal to start talking about a ‘possible’ deal,” Murphy wrote on X, quote-posting Bloomberg’s report. “Trump has been gaslighting us all along about the state of Iran negotiations. I will be on the Senate floor to talk about this later in the week.”
What Qatar Actually Said
The report Murphy was reacting to centered on remarks from Qatar’s Foreign Ministry. At a weekly press briefing Tuesday, ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said mediation efforts between the U.S. and Iran remained active, with draft language for a possible agreement “being circulated” between the two governments. “We can confirm that the efforts are still ongoing with all the parties,” al-Ansari said, according to a transcript of the briefing carried by multiple wire services including Reuters and Xinhua. “We are looking towards diplomatic resolution as we are speaking right now.” He described the talks as having reached “very progressive stages,” with Qatar, Oman, and Pakistan coordinating to facilitate what he called indirect contacts between Washington and Tehran. Asked directly about conflicting U.S. and Iranian accounts of whether negotiations were underway, al-Ansari did not confirm a formal breakthrough, and said no timeline could be set for reaching an actual agreement.
What Trump Said the Same Day
Trump offered a more definitive account hours earlier. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after signing an unrelated executive order, Trump said talks with Iran were “going on right now,” calling the moment “a last chance” for Tehran. “We’re talking, and we’re talking at the request of Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia, backed by UAE and backed by Qatar in particular, but others also,” he said. That framing — direct, active talks already underway — is notably more definite than al-Ansari’s own account of ongoing mediation efforts still working toward a diplomatic opening, a gap that sits at the center of Murphy’s criticism.
The Pattern Murphy Is Pointing To
Murphy’s “gaslighting” charge follows a specific, repeated sequence over recent weeks: Trump has announced imminent or ongoing negotiations multiple times, oil and stock prices have moved on the news, and Iranian officials have subsequently denied that direct talks were taking place. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added to that pattern Tuesday morning, telling CNBC a deal could be reached “today or tomorrow” — a claim that drew public skepticism from commentators pointing out that similarly imminent timelines had been floated and missed before.
Murphy’s Long Record on This War
Tuesday’s post continues criticism Murphy has voiced consistently since the conflict began. On February 28, the day of the initial U.S. strikes, Murphy said in a statement posted to his Senate website that “Trump’s attacks on Iran are dangerously illegal and a mistake of staggering scale,” and argued that “a military action to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program was totally unnecessary” given the existing diplomatic deal Trump had abandoned.
In June, after Trump announced a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war, Murphy took to the Senate floor, according to a transcript posted by his office, to argue the deal had eliminated U.S. leverage in nuclear talks and emboldened hardliners in Tehran. “I have been prepared to swallow basically any deal to end the war,” he said. “I knew the deal was likely going to be humiliating for the United States of America, but I didn’t know it was going to be this humiliating.”
A Running Dispute With the White House
Murphy’s Iran commentary has, at points, drawn direct pushback from the administration. After Murphy posted a sarcastic one-word reaction in April to reports that Iran-linked vessels had bypassed a U.S. naval blockade, the White House’s Rapid Response account responded on X, “You’re a loser, Chris,” and defended the blockade’s effectiveness. Murphy later said the post had been intended as sarcasm and that he “should give up on sarcasm.”
Congress’s Formal Efforts to End the War
Beyond floor speeches, Murphy has pursued legislative avenues to constrain the war. He introduced a War Powers Resolution in March aimed at forcing the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran that Congress had not authorized; that measure failed in a near party-line vote, part of a broader pattern in which Democratic-led War Powers efforts have repeatedly fallen short of the votes needed to bind the administration.
Where the Strait of Hormuz Fits In
Al-Ansari’s Tuesday remarks specifically framed Qatar’s immediate priority as “avoiding escalation, reopening the strait and reopening the door for diplomacy between the parties,” referring to the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has largely closed to traffic for months while the U.S. has maintained a naval blockade of Iran-related shipping. That narrower, near-term goal — de-escalation around the strait — is a smaller ask than the comprehensive end-of-war settlement Trump’s public statements have periodically implied was close at hand.
Qatar’s Emir Gets Involved Directly
The diplomatic activity extended to the head-of-state level Tuesday. The office of Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said he received a phone call from Trump in which the two discussed ways to de-escalate tensions and bridge differences between the United States and Iran — a data point suggesting genuine, if still preliminary, diplomatic movement even as the precise status of direct U.S.-Iran contact remained disputed.
The Market Reaction
Oil prices eased on Tuesday’s news, extending a pattern in which markets have repeatedly moved on Trump’s public statements about Iran diplomacy, regardless of whether those statements were later confirmed or contradicted by other parties to the talks.
Where Things Stand
As of Tuesday, no party — American, Qatari, or Iranian — had confirmed that direct, formal U.S.-Iran negotiations were underway. Qatar’s own account described active mediation and circulating draft language rather than a concluded or even fully scheduled negotiation; Trump described talks as already happening. Murphy’s floor remarks later this week are expected to press the administration for a clearer, verifiable account of exactly what stage the diplomacy has actually reached.