WASHINGTON — A day after the 60-day negotiating window between the United States and Iran expired without a deal, Iran's parliamentary speaker hardened Tehran's conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude climbed to a three-week high and the White House ruled out an extension.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Tuesday that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would keep control of shipping through the strait until Washington lifted its naval blockade, released frozen Iranian assets, dropped oil sanctions and halted military operations on all fronts. President Trump, who told Fox News on Monday that Iran "should put up the white flag of surrender," replied "No" when a BBC reporter asked in the Oval Office if he was seeking an extension of the memorandum of understanding signed at Versailles in June.
The lapse ends a framework that was supposed to pause hostilities, reopen the strait — which carried about a fifth of the world's traded oil and gas before the war — and open talks on Iran's nuclear program. The Associated Press wrote Monday that after 60 days, the two sides "are further apart than they were then."
What shifted
Maritime data captured the deterioration. Crossings through Hormuz fell 19.5 percent last week, according to Marine Traffic and Kpler, dropping from 19 vessels on Aug. 11 to three on Aug. 16. U.S. Central Command said Monday it had redirected 64 commercial vessels under the blockade, disabled three and boarded two. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 2.7 percent to $90.87 a barrel Monday and inched higher Tuesday to $91.22.
The Oman track
Iran and Oman said Monday they had reached an understanding on a new transit corridor through the strait, though the plan would need U.S. approval to take effect. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said "an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route" and that the two governments were preparing a joint declaration. Oman, a U.S. security partner of nearly two centuries, has positioned itself as a neutral mediator. Trump nonetheless told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that "if Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them."
Trump's line
In the Oval Office, Trump said Iran wants a deal but "they're not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary," and posted on Truth Social: "The number one goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a nuclear weapon." Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and adviser, told Fox News the administration remained "willing to make a deal that could be great for the Iranian people" but that Tehran was "not showing any interest in doing something that makes sense for us." An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman denied the president's claim of a direct backchannel with the corps, telling Tasnim News the assertion was "fantasies caused by the delusions and nightmares he has suffered as a result of defeat and desperation in the war."
The counterpoint
Analysts sympathetic to Tehran's position read the moment as a Washington setback. Laleh Khalili, a professor of Gulf studies at the University of Exeter, told Al Jazeera that a settlement "mediated without US intervention and which in fact allows Oman and Iran to manage passage through Hormuz, which lies entirely within the two countries' territorial waters, would show how impotent the United States is and has been." Iran's deputy foreign minister for legal affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, dismissed Trump's earlier vow to declare Hormuz U.S. territory, writing that the strait "cannot be taken over by a tweet, nor by an aircraft carrier, nor by issuing a decree, nor by an election speech."
The military bill has begun to show. Reuters reported this month that the Army had used "virtually all" of its Precision Strike Missile stocks, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated Patriot interceptor inventories had fallen at least 65 percent from prewar levels. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week the Navy could rotate ships to sustain the blockade indefinitely.
With the memorandum gone, the administration's choices narrow to extending informal talks, escalating strikes or letting the stalemate carry into the Nov. 3 midterm campaign.