United States President Donald Trump told reporters on Thursday that he believes the war on Iran is nearing an end, promising that petrol prices will drop when the conflict is over.
Citing an unnamed lawmaker, Iran’s Fars news agency reported that an Iranian parliamentary committee is reviewing a preliminary bill that would bar US, Israeli and other “hostile” vessels from transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
On Thursday, Iran and Oman said they had agreed on coordinates for shipping routes through the strait, whose closure has triggered a global energy crisis. The two are currently engaged in talks to resolve disagreements between the US and Iran over how the strait should be controlled. It is hoped that once these are resolved, broader peace talks between the US and Iran can continue.
Here is the latest.
What did Trump say on Thursday night?
Of the war with Iran, he told reporters in the Oval Office: “I think it’s going to end pretty soon. I don’t think they can go much longer.”
He added that he is involved in negotiations with Tehran. “I think we’re doing fine,” Trump said.
Iran has denied it is holding direct talks with the US, however, saying it is speaking solely to Oman about control of the Strait of Hormuz.
On Saturday last week, Trump cancelled a planned large-scale military attack on Iran, claiming that Tehran and other countries in the region had asked the US to call off the strikes as a diplomatic breakthrough was close.
He reacted angrily this week to US media reports that the US may, in fact, be running low on weapons in the region.
Michael Stephens, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said that for months, reports have been that the US was running low on its interceptors and would continue to do so if the war continued.
“The fact is it’s more dangerous for US military personnel to operate in the region as a result of these missile shortages. It’s putting strain on other commands in East Asia as well, so the problem is very acute,” Stephens told Al Jazeera.
How likely is it that the war will ‘end pretty soon’?
Trump has been asserting for months that Iran has already been defeated and that the conflict is on the verge of ending. Iranian officials, however, have emphasised that they are prepared for a long war.
Over the course of the war, Trump has repeated a pattern of threatening a major attack on Iran, before walking back on the threat and saying a deal is imminent.
On April 7, Trump threatened that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz.
When two hours were left of Trump’s ultimatum, he rescinded the threat, instead announcing a two-week ceasefire.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera on Monday that Trump’s repeated escalations and then cancellations of attacks on Iran have harmed prospects for a negotiated settlement to the war.
“I think this has become somewhat of a tiresome pattern,” he said.
“At some point, all credibility for negotiations is going to be lost. The credibility of actually sticking to a deal is questionable. The credibility of any incentives that are offered is questionable. And obviously, the credibility of the threats is degraded.”
Furthermore, experts say that even if the management of the Strait of Hormuz is resolved, this will not spell the end of the US-Iran war. Talks for that will have to restart.
Alan Eyre, a distinguished diplomatic fellow with the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera earlier this week that the only important talks taking place right now are those between Iran and Oman about the Strait of Hormuz.
He explained that Iran has decided it is not worth talking directly to the US because it “can’t count on anything the US says”.
“Nothing has changed. President Trump has promised to annihilate Iran five or six times and then backs down at the last minute. I think it’s highly doubtful there are talks, that he’s reaching an agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue or the Strait of Hormuz,” Eyre said.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator, accused Trump of conducting theatre diplomacy in a social media post on Thursday.
“‘Massive attack coming … wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.’ That’s theater diplomacy on loop,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.
“Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy.”
He called on the US to “acknowledge the facts” and fulfil its commitments.
What do we know about the Hormuz negotiations?
Shipping data shows traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran first closed in early March following the start of US-Israeli strikes on Tehran, dropped to 33 vessels between Monday and Thursday, down from 50 the previous week, the Reuters news agency reported on Friday.
While a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on June 17 between Iran and the US, under which Iran committed to reopen the strait to all shipping freely for at least 60 days, the vague wording of that agreement led to disagreements, primarily over what routes ships should take. The dispute culminated in Iran firing at several ships taking a US/Oman-approved route and then the US resuming attacks on Iran.
Since those attacks ceased last week, Iran has been holding talks with Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Tehran claiming that a deal is “on the verge of being finalised”, after both countries agreed on the coordinates of routes through the critical waterway on Thursday. In the meantime, the strait remains closed to most traffic while the US has reinstated a corresponding naval blockade on Iranian ports.
The strait, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies were shipped before the US-Israel war on Iran began, has become the most urgent issue on the agenda for talks between Iran and the US.
Ultimately, Iran wants to maintain control of shipping passing through its territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz, and wants the option to charge fees in the future. The US has stated that Iran should not have control of the strait and must not be allowed to charge fees of any kind.
Analysts believe the US will have to bend on its refusal to allow Iran any control, however, given the pressure the Trump administration is under to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened to commercial traffic.
David Des Roches, a former director of Arabian Peninsula affairs in the US Department of Defense, told Al Jazeera this week that any eventual agreement is, therefore, likely to reflect the reality that Iran cannot simply be excluded from managing a waterway on its coast.
“I think that the rough outlines of a deal are that Iran would deny free international passage in areas of its territorial waters,” Des Roches said. “I think that’s probably about the best that can be reached at this point in time.”
