Qatar presses an interim Hormuz deal as White House intentions stay unclear
President Donald Trump has moved away from both additional U.S. strikes on Iran and additional negotiations with Tehran in the week since Republicans lost ground in the midterm elections, in a run of public statements that has left Middle East mediators unsure of the administration’s next step.
Trump’s tonal shifts have only added to the uncertainty about what comes next in a war in which America’s allies were not consulted before it was started but nonetheless struggle to deal with its economic ramifications.
The 8-month-old conflict has contributed to global economic turmoil, and Trump acknowledged the day after the midterms that the war and its economic fallout were partly to blame for his party’s electoral losses, while maintaining that going to war was the right thing to do.
At the start of this week, Trump met with Qatar’s prime minister at the White House and told reporters afterward that he believed it was highly unlikely he would need to order new major strikes on Iran, declaring that the war “militarily is effectively over.”
By Thursday, Trump was again questioning whether he needed to rush toward an endgame. He declared that the United States no longer needs a deal with Tehran and directed Vance — who served as his chief negotiator in earlier peace talks with Iran — to turn his attention to the administration’s domestic anti-fraud campaign.
Trump posted that message the morning after The Wall Street Journal reported that Vance was thinking about resuming talks with Tehran, and as Vance had been weighing possible reengagement with senior Iranian negotiators, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump, who had been aware of Vance’s deliberations, believed the Iranians were not acting in good faith, the person added.
Trump is also increasingly confident that he can credibly declare that he has achieved his military objectives in the war.
Even as he stepped back from diplomacy, Trump warned that the U.S. military is “locked and loaded” and monitoring Pickaxe Mountain, a facility linked to Iran’s nuclear program, for signs of activity. “If something does not work out, I would not hesitate” to act, Trump told conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt on Thursday.
Qatar, the chief mediator, continues to try to negotiate an interim agreement that would restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — a vital passageway for oil and natural gas flowing from the Persian Gulf to global markets — while leaving room for further U.S.-Iran discussions. Two Middle East diplomats familiar with the process said those efforts are now clouded by uncertainty after Trump’s shifting and sometimes contradictory comments. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The diplomats said the situation had appeared to be on the right track earlier in the week after Qatar’s prime minister met with Trump, but the Thursday post created a sense of limbo. One diplomat said the message raised questions about why Trump appeared to be sidelining Vance, who was skeptical about launching the war but ultimately supported Trump. The second diplomat described the peace push as in a holding pattern while people await clarification from the White House, and said it was not clear to mediators or to the Iranians whether Trump’s comments meant he was abandoning a negotiated agreement or was posturing after the elections that cost his Republican Party control of Congress.
Transiting the Strait of Hormuz remains treacherous: the United Nations reported that October had the highest number of incidents against commercial ships in the contested waters since February. Trump nonetheless believes that with oil shipments through the strait near prewar levels, he could potentially leave Gulf countries to negotiate an arrangement with the Iranians governing the waterway, the person familiar with the matter said.
Iran remains unwilling to negotiate over its nuclear program until the United States agrees to several core conditions Tehran has demanded be part of any ceasefire agreement, and differences over Iran’s nuclear activities remain the thorniest issue — one Trump insists must be resolved in any deal to end the war. Iran’s deputy U.N. ambassador Gholamhossein Darzi told the United Nations Security Council on Friday that Iran “has never closed the door to diplomacy,” but warned that if the U.S. or Israel return to bombing, Iran would offer “an immediate and decisive response.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier in the week that the U.S. is not opposed to mediators continuing their efforts. “If there’s a deal to be done, the president will be the first one to be in favor of it,” Rubio said. “But it’s not going to be a stupid deal. It’s not going to be a bad deal.” In a Friday evening speech to the Federalist Society, Rubio underscored that Trump’s approach is leading to the Iranian economy collapsing. “The economic pain that we are inflicting on that regime is so great that there’s no need for military action because we’ve weakened them so much,” Rubio said. The White House declined to comment directly to queries about Trump’s postelection rhetoric on Iran.
Democrats offered a sharper assessment. “President Trump is now acting like an arsonist who has set ablaze our foreign policy,” Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in an interview Friday on the sidelines of the Democrats’ postelection gathering in Denver. “And now he just wants to walk away.”
Trump’s positioning is expected to shadow a trip next week to the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen. While in Shenzhen, Trump is to hold an unprecedented three-way summit with China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and is expected to discuss Iran and the three powers’ nuclear stockpiles with both leaders.
Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he expects the status quo to persist for some time, with the U.S. and Iran locked in a stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz and the United States continuing a monthslong naval blockade curbing the flow of Iranian crude to global markets. Singh, who worked on Middle East issues in former President George W. Bush’s White House, said the strategy of squeezing Iran economically is a far more attractive option for Trump than military escalation or concessions to Tehran, and that Trump could reverse his position on Vance engaging with the Iranians if he finds Tehran ready to negotiate seriously. “It’s probably the most sensible path as well to sort of be patient, keep the pressure on, allow the mediators to keep doing their work,” Singh said. “And when the time is right, but not before then, is when you want to engage senior officials like the vice president and so forth.”