President Trump said Tuesday the Strait of Hormuz will reopen very soon as negotiations with Iran continue, while warning Tehran of strong military action if no deal is reached. He told Fox News the strait is going to be open very soon — or Iran will be hit very hard, and then the strait will open regardless.
Trump said he had been prepared to launch a major attack against Iran but agreed to negotiate after Iranian officials requested talks, describing a phone call in which Iran asked, very politely, to talk, prompting him to agree and push to finally get it done. He characterized the attack he’d been ready to launch as the largest since World War II.
This account directly contradicts Iran’s own public position. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei has flatly denied any negotiations were taking place or planned, and a senior Iranian source separately told Reuters no talks were scheduled, with Foreign Minister Araghchi unavailable on a religious pilgrimage in Iraq. The specific claim that Iran called requesting talks stands in particularly sharp contrast to Baghaei’s insistence that the only active dialogue involves Oman over Hormuz management specifically, with no US-Iran negotiations occurring at all.
Trump reiterated his position that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, warning that Tehran would face severe consequences if it abandoned negotiations. He said Iran would be hit really hard if it backs out again, framing continued military pressure as something Iran fully understands and expects, and describing his position as leaving him no choice given the nuclear weapons issue.
Trump described US and Iranian officials as engaged in very good discussions, though he acknowledged Tehran hasn’t publicly confirmed this progress — an admission that, taken alongside Iran’s explicit public denials, suggests even Trump recognizes the gap between his characterization and Iran’s stated position. He said only action matters, that Iran wants to make a deal, and that failing to reach one would be very bad for Tehran.
This latest round of claims extends the now well-established pattern of contradictory statements that has defined recent days of this conflict. Iranian officials, including senior Khamenei advisor Mohsen Rezaei, have separately and firmly stated that Hormuz will not reopen on American terms and that no alternate shipping route will be permitted — directly undercutting Trump’s confident prediction of imminent reopening. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gharibabadi has also detailed how Iran rejected both a US proposal in Islamabad and an Omani compromise specifically because they didn’t secure Iran’s demands over the strait upfront.
Given this pattern of flatly contradictory public statements between the two governments on nearly every aspect of the conflict — from whether talks are occurring at all to the terms under discussion to Hormuz’s ultimate status — Trump’s prediction that the strait will reopen very soon should be treated as one side’s characterization rather than a confirmed outcome. Oil markets have already shown sensitivity to exactly this kind of whiplash between optimistic and pessimistic signals, with Brent crude swinging sharply in both directions over the past two trading sessions alone as the conflicting accounts have emerged. Whether Trump’s optimistic timeline holds, or whether Iran’s public denials and hardline Hormuz stance prove more predictive of the actual trajectory, will likely become clear only through observable developments — actual strikes, actual negotiations, or an actual reopening of the strait — rather than through either government’s competing public statements.
