Iran has issued its toughest list of demands yet for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, throwing President Trump’s hopes of declaring victory in the Iran war into doubt just days after the White House signaled a deal to restore commercial shipping through the waterway was within reach. For weeks, Trump had quietly told senior aides he was prepared to walk away from the conflict without a nuclear agreement, so long as Tehran fully reopened the strait, according to U.S. officials. That scaled-back objective became far harder to reach on Saturday, when a senior Iranian security official laid out sweeping new conditions, including the withdrawal of American forces from the region, the end of the U.S. naval blockade, the lifting of sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian assets and billions of dollars in war reparations.
The demands came from Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who said in a statement carried by state media that the U.S. would also need to permanently end the war, halt threats and insults, and stop military action against Iran’s regional militia allies before Tehran would allow free passage through the strait. His remarks, reported by the state news agency IRNA, upended expectations of an imminent breakthrough and left Trump with fewer paths toward ending a conflict that began in late February.
The chain of events suggests the president’s options for extracting the U.S. from the war have narrowed once again. Trump has repeatedly threatened a major escalation of the bombing campaign against Iran, only to back away each time. The latest turmoil in negotiations signals that Tehran believes it can sustain a long, grinding standoff rather than concede quickly to U.S. terms.
Analysts said Iran’s hardened position reflects a calculation that Washington is more eager to end the war than Tehran is. “Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, offered a similar read: “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”
The dispute traces back to a June cease-fire, known as the Islamabad Memorandum, brokered by Pakistani mediators, which called for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and temporarily lifting oil sanctions on Iran. The agreement’s language proved vague, and Washington and Tehran soon clashed over its meaning. The U.S. backed a southern shipping route that skirted Oman’s coastline and avoided Iranian waters; Iran responded by warning and striking vessels that used it. The cease-fire collapsed within weeks, and the U.S. reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Saturday that Tehran and Oman were “very close” to a separate agreement governing management of the strait, but he cautioned that reopening the waterway still depended on the U.S. compensating Iran for what he called violations of the June memorandum. “The Americans were seeking to establish new routes through the Strait of Hormuz, and despite the warnings issued by our country, they sought to undermine Iran’s management of the strait,” Araghchi said, according to Tasnim, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. “Therefore, any violation of the memorandum of understanding or of Iran’s management of the Strait of Hormuz is absolutely unacceptable to the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hossein Mohebbi, said separately that reopening the strait was “not contingent on the Iran-Oman negotiations” but would instead depend “on the United States fully accepting Iran’s conditions,” without immediately detailing what those conditions were beyond insisting Washington stay out of Iran’s talks with Oman and other countries.
The renewed friction coincided with an attack Saturday that the United Arab Emirates said targeted a tanker belonging to the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as it crossed the strait. The company has reported that at least 15 of its vessels have come under attack in the waterway since the war began, resulting in one death and 20 injuries among crew members. Oman’s foreign ministry condemned what it called “repeated attacks on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz” as violations of international law, while saying its negotiations with Iran were “proceeding in a positive and constructive atmosphere.”
Vice President JD Vance, appearing on Fox News Saturday, described the U.S. as continuing to press Iran for long-term changes in its posture toward Washington, while acknowledging talks remained unresolved. “And if not, that’s fine, too, we’re just going to keep on applying the pressure we can apply, and getting as much oil and gas out of the Middle East so that Americans can enjoy lower gas and energy prices,” Vance said, adding, “We’re in the middle of the game.” He said the U.S. and Oman were working out “a traffic scheme so that the ships that pass can pass through safely,” including demining efforts and a commitment from Iran not to fire on commercial vessels, but he did not specify what concessions Washington might be willing to make. Instead, he argued Tehran was under heavy strain: “They’re hurting in a big way. They want this thing to be over. The question is whether they’re able, their system is able, to give the things that are necessary for us to be happy.”
Money remains one of the largest obstacles to any deal. Iran is seeking billions of dollars in war reparations in addition to the unfreezing of its assets held around the world, while Trump has said the White House will not allow taxpayer funds to go to Iran — though officials acknowledge an agreement is unlikely without releasing some frozen assets, possibly with conditions attached. A related dispute concerns whether Washington should issue waivers allowing Iran to sell oil on the open market, an arrangement the U.S. had agreed to in June as part of the now-collapsed interim cease-fire.
Trump has continued to signal in public remarks that he is looking for a way out of the conflict even without a formal nuclear deal. He told reporters Thursday that the U.S. naval blockade meant the strait was “sort of open right now,” while acknowledging Iran could still damage ships with missiles, drones and mines. He has also played down concerns about Iran’s buried uranium stockpile, telling NATO leaders at July’s summit, “We’ve already got the nuclear material, because it’s so far underground. Nobody’s going to be able to get it except us.” On Friday, Trump linked on social media to an article declaring “Donald Trump Won the Iran War,” even as a deal to reopen the strait remained unfinished. U.S. officials said the president privately believes Iran is unlikely to revive its nuclear program during his presidency, following U.S. strikes that destroyed three of the country’s primary nuclear sites last year, and that American intelligence would detect any attempt to rebuild them covertly.
The stakes for reopening the strait extend well beyond the immediate conflict. Roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day, close to a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, normally moves through the 21-mile-wide waterway between Iran and Oman, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and International Energy Agency. Nearly a fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade also transits the strait, much of it from Qatar, and roughly 90 percent of the oil that passes through is bound for Asian markets, including China, India, Japan and South Korea.
Shipping through the strait has collapsed since the war began. Just over a dozen vessels per day have navigated the waterway over the past week, according to the maritime data firm Kpler, down from an average of 130 ships daily before the conflict erupted in February. Some vessels have switched off the transponders that broadcast their locations to avoid detection by Iranian or American forces enforcing rival blockades, making an accurate count of crossings difficult to compile.
For Trump, the practical pressure to resolve the standoff is mounting as the November 3 midterm elections approach. The average U.S. price of gasoline stood at $4.02 a gallon on Saturday, according to AAA, up from $3.16 a year earlier though down slightly from the prior week. A White House official said the administration considers its military objectives against Iran complete and that Trump’s focus has shifted to securing the free flow of energy through the strait, while keeping military options open should Iran target more ships. U.S. officials said Trump is prepared to be patient with the stalled talks, particularly as long as gasoline prices hold steady, and that he is expected to extend the current cease-fire indefinitely and lift the naval blockade on Iranian ports if Tehran fully reopens the waterway.
Whether that happens soon remains uncertain. Raz Zimmt, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Iranian officials view the Oman talks as addressing, at most, the technical details of how the strait might eventually reopen — not the broader political conditions Tehran is demanding. “It is clear that Tehran will not agree to implement them without a return to the U.S. commitments under the memorandum, including lifting the naval blockade and resuming the process of sanctions relief,” Zimmt wrote on social media. With Iran betting that Washington’s desire for an exit outweighs its leverage, the coming weeks are likely to test how far Trump is willing to go to secure the face-saving resolution he has been seeking since the war began.