Trump Says Iran Reached Out on Deal as US Blocks Hormuz

President Trump said negotiations between the US and Iran remain ongoing despite the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that went into effect Monday morning. The president took questions from reporters after he met a Doordash delivery person outside the oval office in an event meant to highlight 'no tax on tips.'

President Donald Trump said Iran reached out to his administration over peace negotiations, as the US began a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in the war’s seventh week.

Even as Trump sought to jawbone negotiations back on track, there were few signs that was taking place after weekend negotiations failed in Islamabad. Iran blamed the collapse of talks on the US and Tehran has not confirmed further discussions on Monday.

“We’ve been called this morning by the right people, the appropriate people, and they want to work a deal,” Trump said at the White House, without elaborating on who participated in the conversation.

Trump spoke hours after the US moved to cut off vessels from transiting the vital waterway to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas, which could further inflame tensions amid the global energy crisis.

The US president once again claimed that negotiations had failed due to Iran’s insistence on maintaining a nuclear program. Trump said he was “sure” Iran will eventually agree to abandon nuclear ambitions, and reiterated there would be no deal without that concession.

The US president said again that there are countries willing to support the US mission in Hormuz, but declined to name them and said he would provide further details Tuesday.

Oil prices rose as investors braced for further supply shortages if the US blockade curtails the flow of Iranian oil to global markets. Prices remained choppy, though, as trading costs have surged, in turn sapping liquidity.  Crude’s gains were capped, with US oil wiping out nearly all of the sessions gains, after Trump said Iran had reached out Monday for a deal. Both benchmarks settled near $99 a barrel. Trump’s blockade will test the durability of a fragile ceasefire with Iran and intensifies a global energy crisis in a six-week war that’s seen thousands of deaths across the region. It marks the latest move by the US president to strong-arm Iran into easing its own chokehold over the strait after talks in Pakistan on extending the ceasefire failed to reach a deal.

“We can’t let a country blackmail or extort the world,” Trump said. He also claimed, without evidence, that “many ships are heading to our country right now” to load up with US oil and repeated that “we don’t use the strait — we don’t need the strait.”

Iran has said it would target all ports in the Persian Gulf if its own shipping hubs are threatened, setting up a fresh standoff in waters that typically see flows of about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.

The security of ports in the region is “either for everyone or for no one,” Iran’s armed forces said in a statement on Monday, according to the state-run IRIB News. The US blocking the strait would be “an act of piracy,” it said, reiterating plans to permanently control the critical waterway even after the war.

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