Washington has moved the Strait of Hormuz out of the foreground of its public negotiating agenda and returned Iran’s nuclear programme to the top of its priorities, presenting progress on the nuclear file as a precondition for any broader agreement with Tehran.
This marks a shift from the Islamabad memorandum, under which Washington had accepted that the nuclear issue would be deferred to a later stage of negotiations, beginning 60 days after a transitional phase. At that point, the United States was primarily focused on reopening the strait, which had been open before a war now approaching its eighth month.
That does not mean Hormuz has lost its strategic significance in Washington’s calculations. Quite the opposite.
The strait remains critical to the global economy, energy markets and Donald Trump’s electoral calculations. Its importance has also increased following rapid developments in Yemen that have brought Ansar Allah, the Houthis, closer to controlling the approaches to Bab al-Mandab.
Yet for several months, the Trump administration and Trump personally have repeatedly claimed that Hormuz is now fully open, that Washington has imposed complete control over it and that millions of barrels of oil are once again passing through every day, sometimes at levels higher than before 28 February.
The American narrative is built around the argument that Tehran has lost control over the strait, that Hormuz is no longer a bargaining card in Iranian hands and that what once represented strategic leverage has become a burden following the tightening of sanctions and the blockade imposed on Iran by land, sea and air.
Trump and his Treasury Secretary have described this approach as turning Iran into an “economic pariah”.
This narrative now dominates American political and media discourse. It is repeated constantly by officials from the White House, State Department and Department of War, and echoed by American-aligned analysts, experts and former officials across Arab television networks.
That makes it politically difficult for the American negotiator to adopt a bargaining strategy that begins publicly with the strait.
Washington has therefore returned to the nuclear file, an issue that once stood at the centre of the stated objectives of the American war against Iran. Raising it again also leaves the door open to negotiations over other unresolved issues, foremost among them Hormuz.
In the actual negotiations, however, Washington has not removed the strait from its discussions with Iran through the Pakistani and Qatari mediators.
Hormuz remains present, and prominently so.
Iran’s requested price, embodied in its seven conditions, is high enough that Washington is demanding concessions beyond reopening the strait. The United States appears to be continuing its familiar carrot-and-stick approach: it wants Tehran to pay more for the package of concessions Iran itself is demanding.
That price includes commitments concerning what Washington describes as the military dimension of Iran’s nuclear programme, a dimension Tehran insists does not exist.
Iran fears that Washington is using the allegation as a pretext to strip it of its right to civilian and peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
Fog Over the Strait
The Trump administration claims that Hormuz is effectively under American control, that one billion barrels of oil passed through the strait in a single month and that shipments from producing countries other than Iran have returned to pre-war levels.
It further claims that Iran alone has been unable to export even a single drop of oil through what Washington presents as a tightly enforced maritime blockade imposed by American naval forces around Iranian ports, islands and coastlines.
Tehran presents a completely different account.
Iran says the strait remains under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that it remains effectively closed and that no party would dare attempt to force it open without risking devastating attacks from Iranian naval and Revolutionary Guard forces.
At the same time, Iranian officials have acknowledged that a small number of ships and tankers may be able to pass covertly under cover of darkness after switching off navigation and communications systems.
International organisations specialising in tracking maritime traffic publish daily and weekly estimates suggesting that only six to ten vessels are currently passing through the strait each day, compared with roughly 120 to 140 ships and tankers before the war.
Tehran cites these estimates as evidence supporting its account.
Washington dismisses them, arguing that maritime tracking organisations cannot monitor vessels that switch off their systems and are escorted by American warships through secure southern routes during the night.
Reliable figures have therefore become another casualty of the information war between Washington and Tehran, reflecting the broader confrontation being fought through air raids, missiles and drones.
The precise reality inside the strait remains difficult to determine. The figures themselves have become heavily politicised, particularly when cited by Trump, whose public statements have repeatedly been criticised for exaggeration and for selecting figures that serve his political narrative.
Oil markets nevertheless suggest that conditions in Hormuz are far from normal.
Only a limited number of ships and tankers appear to be passing through each day, although the precise number remains unclear. Shipping and insurance costs remain exceptionally high, while crude oil, having crossed the $100-per-barrel threshold, has not fallen back below it.
Hormuz therefore continues to cause serious problems for Washington, regardless of Trump’s claims that American control has already been established.
It is unlikely that the Iranian negotiators themselves are treating those public declarations as a reflection of conditions on the ground.
Seven Days, Seven Conditions
Tehran’s proposal, known as the “seven days, seven conditions” initiative, sought to tempt Trump with the prospect of reopening Hormuz quickly in the hope of persuading him to retreat from his harder negotiating position.
So far, that effort has not succeeded.
There appear to be two principal reasons.
The first is that the initiative contains seven conditions that, taken together, effectively reproduce and condense the memorandum of understandings previously reached between the presidents of the two warring countries.
Iran has not withdrawn any of its central demands.
Instead, it proposed accelerating the implementation process. Under the Iranian offer, the timetable would begin the morning after Washington accepted the proposal, Hormuz would reopen on the sixth day and negotiations over the remaining issues would resume on the seventh.
Tehran appears to have calculated that the prospect of a rapid reopening of the strait would be attractive enough for Trump to accept the arrangement.
That did not happen.
Trump had already faced a wave of criticism over what his opponents characterised as excessive concessions to Tehran in the earlier memorandum. The new Iranian initiative differed little in substance from an agreement Trump had repeatedly declared dead.
The second issue is timing.
Iran’s proposal arrived on the eve of crucial US midterm elections that could shape the political future of both Trump and the Republican Party.
For a president whose political style is deeply tied to presenting himself as victorious and dominant, accepting a deal that could expose him to renewed accusations of weakness or concession before Iran would carry significant domestic costs.
Trump continues to insist that the United States won the war and that the victory was absolute.
At the same time, however, he does not appear eager to close the door to diplomacy.
Trump does not fundamentally want to return to an open-ended war with Iran and its allies, a confrontation that could expand across the region.
This helps explain the abrupt return of the nuclear programme to the centre of his rhetoric.
Iran’s nuclear activities have once again become a constant focus of Trump’s statements, while an agreement on the issue is now being presented as a prerequisite for movement on diplomacy, mediation and negotiations.
Why Has Trump Raised the Nuclear Stakes?
There are at least two possible readings of Trump’s decision to reorder his negotiating priorities with Tehran.
The first is that he believes sanctions and the blockade have placed Iran under growing pressure and that its ability to withstand the confrontation is weakening.
From this perspective, Trump may believe that the decisive victory he has sought is now within reach, encouraging him to harden his position and raise his demands.
Supporters of this interpretation point to what they describe as increasing Iranian flexibility.
They cite the seven-day initiative, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s comments indicating Tehran’s willingness to relinquish highly enriched uranium, and the Revolutionary Guard’s support for negotiations.
Such signals may have encouraged Trump to conclude that Iran is under sufficient pressure to concede more.
This possibility cannot be dismissed. Colonial powers have historically interpreted flexibility by their adversaries as evidence of weakness or impending collapse.
A second interpretation is that Trump remains eager to close the Iran file, but regards Tehran’s seven conditions for reopening Hormuz as too costly to accept without obtaining an additional concession on the nuclear issue.
A nuclear component could allow him to present any eventual agreement to his domestic audience as better than the earlier memorandum.
It would also allow Trump to claim that he had fulfilled his pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Tehran, for its part, continues to insist that its nuclear programme is peaceful and that the late Supreme Leader’s religious ruling prohibiting nuclear weapons remains in force.
Under this interpretation, the nuclear issue is not replacing Hormuz.
Rather, it is being added to the negotiations as the additional price Washington believes it needs in order to justify accepting Iran’s conditions on the strait.
Between Escalation and Diplomacy
The American-Iranian confrontation continues to move between periods of intense escalation and temporary diplomatic openings.
Both sides have repeatedly resorted to brinkmanship, while every new initiative or burst of mediation creates another short-lived period of relative calm.
At the time of writing, the colder winds of negotiation appeared to be prevailing.
That could change rapidly.
Throughout this confrontation, moments of apparent diplomatic optimism have repeatedly been followed by sudden escalation.
Hormuz has therefore not disappeared from the confrontation, nor has it lost its strategic weight.
The change is primarily in how Washington is publicly structuring the negotiations.
By placing the nuclear issue first, the Trump administration may be attempting to create political room for a broader bargain in which reopening Hormuz remains central, but is no longer the only price it expects Tehran to pay.
