Trump on Monday said he has no plans to lift the blockade until the two sides reach an agreement. That’s led to the current impasse — with both Tehran and Washington, as of Tuesday, refusing to blink.
But Trump did give some ground on Tuesday afternoon. After saying he was disinclined to extend the ceasefire for a second time, the president did just that.
Trump said it was a favor to the Pakistanis, implying it was not a U.S. concession but it also underscored how fluid the efforts to reach a broader agreement remain. The two sides have for days traded barbs on social media, seemed to negotiate through the press and lobbed threats at one another. It remains unclear whether some of the most recent demands from the Iranians or Americans are meant to be bluffs or are, in fact, red lines. The requirements and refusals could change at any time.. And the blockade is only one of several sticking points facing the president’s negotiating team, which arrived at the White House Tuesday afternoon for talks about whether a second face-to-face meeting would even take place.
Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saied Iravani, told reporters that Iran “has received some signs” that the U.S. is ready to lift the blockade, which he confirmed is a top demand for Tehran. As soon as the U.S. lifts it, he continued, “I think that the next round of the negotiations will take place in Islamabad.”
Vance was ready to head to Islamabad for a second round of negotiations when plans were put on hold. The White House has not responded to inquiries about whether the vice president would be leaving, or if he would be making the trip at all.
The chaotic, potentially climactic moment six weeks into the war with Iran has been building in recent days, with Trump delivering a dizzying array of often conflicting messages on television, social media and in brief calls with reporters — calming markets to a degree while inflaming Iran and adding to a general sense of confusion about the president’s endgame.
Trump on Tuesday both predicted “great success” with Iran in the next round of talks and said, “I expect to be bombing.”
His contradictory comments followed a spate of phone calls with reporters on Monday during which he said Vance was not taking part in the next round of talks in Islamabad, that those talks were to begin in just hours and that a final deal was due to be signed by the evening.
“There are better ways to send messages, but Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” said one of the two Mideast officials. “We’ve conveyed this to his team, but no one dares tell him this.”
According to the official, Trump’s decision to continue the U.S. blockade of Iranian vessels in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran announced last Friday it was reopening the critical waterway to shipping traffic “incensed” leaders in Tehran.
The president’s subsequent social media posts overstating what Iran had agreed to in talks added insult to injury. “Something in those [posts] really freaked them out,” the official said. “The Iranians have domestic political concerns, too. But Trump doesn’t seem to understand that or care.”
The U.S. has also waged a campaign to choke off vessels supplying Iran in recent days. U.S. forces interdicted the sanctioned tanker M/T Tifani overnight in the Indo-Pacific. Iran has called such operations “piracy at sea and state terrorism” and said the boarding violated the terms of the ceasefire.
Whether the president’s shifting statements reflect the strategic calculations developed by a cadre of administration officials or the scattershot whims of a president who prides himself on his maximalist negotiating style and an ability to keep his adversaries on their toes is difficult to know.
In either case, it is making it harder to reach a deal, said Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk assessment firm based in New York.
“Trump’s eagerness to announce a deal and willingness to exaggerate terms that the Iranians haven’t actually agreed to makes it harder to get to yes,” he said.
Inside the White House, “trust in Trump” is something of a mantra. Aides believe that this president’s frenetic negotiating style, however unorthodox, has been proven to work in other instances, be it his securing new trade deals after raising tariffs or getting NATO allies to commit last year to spending more on defense. And Trump’s comments do appear to have boosted financial markets, which buys the president a little more political cover and leeway to negotiate.
But Trump’s sway appears to be waning when it comes to oil markets, said a former Trump energy adviser in close contact with the White House. While Trump’s Truth Social posts caused a brief dip in crude oil futures, they steadily rose about 6 percent on Monday, the person noted. Oil markets ticked up again Tuesday. It shows the market is perhaps not as credulous about Trump’s claims as it once was, the former adviser noted.
“Fool me once, shame on you,” the former adviser said. “Fool me twice, shame on me.”
And the trendline for oil – and by extension what Americans pay at the pump – remains headed in the wrong direction for Trump and the GOP.
“He’ll step in and try to head fake the market, and it goes down, and then it comes back up,” said Greg Priddy, an expert on energy market disruption who worked at the U.S. Energy Information Administration in the George W. Bush administration and is now a senior fellow at the conservative Center for the National Interest. “When you look at the chart since the beginning of the war, there’s a steady upward trend. It just goes way up, way down, way up, way down, but the line of best fit through that is steadily upward.”