What to Know About the Mideast Standoff
“President Trump paused a plan to help ships exit the Strait of Hormuz, citing progress in negotiations with Iran to end the war. Despite the cease-fire, Iran has attacked ships and fired missiles, prompting the U.S. to sink Iranian speedboats. The Trump administration’s messaging has shifted from regime change to pressuring Iran’s economy, with Trump threatening to resume military strikes if Iran doesn’t agree to a deal.
President Trump paused a plan to help ships exit the Strait of Hormuz just a day after it began, sowing confusion about his goals and next steps in the war with Iran.
President Trump said on Tuesday that the United States would pause efforts to help commercial ships exit the Strait of Hormuz, reversing course just a day after the initiative began.
Mr. Trump provided few details of his latest about-face. He said the decision was taken because negotiators had made progress in talks to end the war with Iran, which has effectively blocked the strait, a critical shipping route, since the conflict started. He also said it followed a request from Pakistan, which has been a mediator in talks, and other countries. It was not immediately clear what, if any, progress had been made.
Oil prices fell after the announcement. But Mr. Trump has repeatedly changed his position since the United States and Israel launched a military offensive against Iran in late February, consistently sowing confusion about his war aims, unsettling investors and roiling global energy prices.
Here is what to know about the negotiations to end the war.
What’s the latest?
American officials have said the cease-fire that the United States and Iran agreed to about a month ago remains intact, despite recent developments that have threatened to reignite the conflict.
Since Mr. Trump on Sunday announced the effort to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply transited before the war, Iran has attacked ships and commercial vessels. Iran has also fired missiles and drones at the United Arab Emirates, an American ally. The United States has sunk Iranian military speedboats that it said were threatening commercial vessels.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a news conference on Tuesday that the latest strikes did not threaten the cease-fire, adding that the effort to guide merchant vessels through the strait was a “defensive” initiative separate from the war.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a news conference at the White House later on Tuesday that the initial part of the war ended when the truce was signed and attempts to fully reopen the strait were a humanitarian operation. The United States was the only country capable of forcing Iran to lift its near blockade of the waterway “as a favor to the world,” he said, after allies rejected American attempts to convince them to police the waterway during the war.
But the Trump administration’s messaging has shifted from earlier in the conflict, when the president and senior officials insisted that military strikes would lead to regime change. Now, the rhetoric has changed to focus on increasing the pressure on Iran’s fragile economy to achieve that objective.
As recently as Saturday, Mr. Trump said he would most likely reject Iran’s latest proposal to end the conflict, saying on social media that Tehran had not “yet paid a big enough price for what they have done.”
Two semiofficial Iranian news outlets reported earlier on Saturday that Tehran had sent a 14-point proposal to Pakistani mediators in response to a nine-point U.S. proposal, but they offered few details about what it said.
Could the conflict escalate?
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said on social media that the United States could resume military strikes if Iran failed to agree to a deal to end the war.
The president’s latest threat was issued after reports that the countries were nearing a deal to end the war. Ebrahim Rezaei, an Iranian lawmaker and spokesman for the parliamentary national security committee, said that the published details about a potential deal, which were first reported by Axios, were “more a list of American wishes than a reality.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly insisted that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. Iran has rejected American proposals that it suspend its nuclear program and hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
Iran previously proposed suspending uranium enrichment for five years, followed by five years of very low-grade civilian enrichment. Under that proposal, half of Iran’s 972-pound stockpile of highly enriched uranium would have gone to Russia, an ally, and the other half would have been available to international inspectors.
The United States rejected the offer.
After the first-round negotiations, mediated by Pakistan, collapsed last month, Mr. Trump extended the cease-fire indefinitely and said the U.S. naval blockade of the strait would remain.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday that Washington had given its “response to Iran’s 14-point plan to the Pakistani side” and that the Iranian side was reviewing it..
Despite the efforts by American officials in recent days to downplay the possibility of an escalation, uncertainty over any deal has persisted in the absence of the Trump administration or Iran releasing more details about negotiations.
Shipping companies also fear that Iran has laid mines in the strait’s main channels and could attack commercial vessels. That has deterred most of the hundreds of ships stranded in the Persian Gulf from trying to leave.
Iran’s nuclear program is a stumbling block
Iran insists it has a right to enrich nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that he will not allow Iran to possess a nuclear weapon. But he is also confronting the complicated legacy of his decision, eight years ago, to cancel a deal to curtail the nuclear program.
That Obama-era agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, would have expired after 15 years, leaving Iran free after 2030 to make as much nuclear fuel as it wanted. After Mr. Trump withdrew from the deal, the Iranians went on an enrichment spree.
Much recent attention has focused on Iran’s nearly half-ton of uranium that has been enriched to a level close to what is typically used in atom bombs. Most of it is thought to be buried in a tunnel complex that the United States bombed last June. But those 972 pounds of potential bomb fuel represent only a fraction of the problem.
International inspectors say that Iran has a total of 11 tons of uranium at various enrichment levels. With further purification, that is enough to build up to 100 nuclear weapons.
A clash of negotiating styles
Mr. Trump views himself as the master of coercive diplomacy, forcing his opponents to capitulate quickly to American demands or face the threat of attack.
In dealing with Iran over the past six weeks, he has discovered that he is up against a nation that prides itself on resilience and delay.
“Trump is impulsive and temperamental; Iran’s leadership is stubborn and tenacious,” said Robert Malley, who negotiated with the Iranians in the lead-up to the 2015 nuclear deal and again in a failed effort by the Biden administration.
Ravi Mattu Leo Sands Farnaz Fassihi David E. Sanger and Luke Broadwatercontributed reporting.“
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