Trump Rejects Iran’s Plan to Reopen Strait of Hormuz
President Donald Trump on Saturday rejected an Iranian plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, calling the proposal unacceptable and saying Tehran was offering concessions only because it is “losing so badly.” The rejection leaves intact a seven-month standoff over the world’s most important oil chokepoint and dims hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough before the US midterm elections.
“I like making a deal too,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House, according to NPR. “But, I’m not — that deal would not be acceptable.” He added that Iran wanted to “open the strait immediately because they’re losing so badly.”
The proposal, conveyed through Qatari mediators on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, was a “concrete seven-day plan” presented by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. As of Sunday, Iranian officials said they were still awaiting an official response through the mediators, even after Trump’s public dismissal.
What Iran Proposed
The seven-day plan closely resembles the memorandum of understanding (MoU) the two countries signed on June 17, which briefly halted hostilities before collapsing the following month.
Under the plan, Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the United States agreed to lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports, waive sanctions on Iranian oil sales, release an estimated $12 billion in frozen assets, and observe a wider regional ceasefire that includes Lebanon and Yemen. Once those steps were taken, fighting would stop on all fronts, the strait would reopen, and negotiations on a final agreement — including the nuclear file — would begin.
Araghchi said implementation could start “the next day” if Washington accepted, and that the process could be completed within four to five days if required measures were taken.
“If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened and normal maritime passage restored within seven days,” he said. “The choice now rests with the United States.”
According to Iran’s state broadcaster Press TV, Araghchi said the strait would reopen on the sixth day, followed by a final US agreement on the seventh. He insisted the steps demanded of Washington are not new, arguing they were already contained in the June MoU.
Why the Strait Matters
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow chokepoint connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, bounded by Iran to the north and Oman and the United Arab Emirates to the south. At its narrowest point it is roughly 33 kilometers wide, and its shipping lanes lie entirely within Iranian and Omani territorial waters.
It normally carries about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas — roughly 20 million barrels per day, worth nearly $600 billion in annual energy trade — along with about one-third of the global fertilizer trade. Since Iran closed the waterway after US and Israeli strikes began on February 28, traffic has collapsed from an average of 138 ships per day to just a handful, driving up global fuel prices and prompting fuel rationing as far away as Slovenia.
Alternate overland routes exist, including Saudi Arabia’s East–West pipeline and the UAE’s Fujairah link, but they could not absorb the shortfall. Diverting oil to them would reduce global supply by an estimated 8–10 million barrels per day.
A Familiar Breakdown
The June MoU is the central reference point for both sides — and the source of their distrust. Under the agreement, Iran was to allow ships to pass without tolls for 60 days, the US was to ease its blockade and sanctions, and the nuclear question was deferred to broader talks. Araghchi said maritime traffic returned to about 60 percent of pre-war levels within two weeks.
But the deal unravelled in July amid disputes over vague wording, including who would control the strait, and over ship routing. The US and Iran resumed strikes soon after, and the blockade has remained in place.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a prerecorded interview with CBS’s Face the Nation that aired Sunday, said the breakdown stemmed from a failure to honor agreed shipping lanes. “If the United States agrees to proceed in that way, everything will return to the way it was before,” he said. “Because right now, it’s the United States that has blocked our way, and naturally, Iran has also blocked the way from its side.”
Pezeshkian said Iran would allow UN nuclear inspectors back in if Washington accepted the proposal and resumed nuclear negotiations. He also reaffirmed that developing nuclear weapons is “haram” — religiously forbidden — even as he said Iran had “no trust in the American side.”
Why Trump Is Waiting
Trump’s calculation, analysts say, is that economic pressure is working and that time is on Washington’s side. The administration has tightened its naval blockade, imposed sanctions targeting Iranian oil revenues, threatened secondary sanctions, and last week added aviation sanctions.
“He believes the combination of the naval blockade and economic isolation is finally squeezing Iran hard enough that Tehran’s latest proposal is evidence of weakness rather than an offer Washington needs to seize,” Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera. Richard Weitz of the NATO Defence College said Washington may be betting that “economic pressure over time will induce the Iranian government to make more concessions,” comparing it to the path that led to the 2015 nuclear deal.
The sequencing is a key sticking point: the US wants Iran’s nuclear program discussed immediately rather than compartmentalized, while Iran insists the blockade, sanctions, and assets be addressed first.
The Midterm Gamble
Waiting carries its own risks. A late-August Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63 percent of Americans opposed the war, against 31 percent in support, and rising fuel costs are feeding cost-of-living concerns before November’s elections.
Krieg warned that the strategy could backfire. “The danger is that he is confusing Iranian pain with Iranian willingness to capitulate. Those are not the same thing,” he said. “Trump thinks Iran’s clock is running faster than America’s. Tehran thinks the opposite.”
Iran may instead choose to raise the cost of the conflict, including through the strait and potentially Bab al-Mandeb, where the Iran-aligned Houthis have expanded control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and declared a naval blockade on Saudi ships.
Mohamad Elmasry of the Doha Institute told Al Jazeera that Iran might “throw a bone” to Trump before the vote — or “decide that this is the time to escalate.” Ross Harrison of the Middle East Institute said Tehran now appears “less worried about overplaying their hand than they are underplaying their hand.”
Other experts see the strait as a line Iran will not cross cheaply. “Hormuz is a clear Iranian red line,” Urban Coningham of the Royal United Services Institute told Al Jazeera. “The Iranians will not get reparations for the war, so control of the strait is the only way they can recover economically. I cannot see them backing down from that.”
What’s Next
As of Sunday, the two sides remained far apart on who should move first. Araghchi, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, said Iran is prepared to resume fighting “even if it comes to a doomsday war,” while Trump claimed the US had moved “a record amount of oil” through the strait — a characterization at odds with reporting that traffic has dwindled to a trickle. The IRGC separately claimed to have captured a US underwater drone in the strait, a claim US Central Command denied.
With both governments convinced that waiting will improve the terms they eventually get, the most likely near-term outcome, Krieg said, is “protraction” of a conflict that has already reshaped global energy markets. “Both sides need a deal,” he added, “but both currently think waiting will improve the deal they eventually get.”