Trump signals Iran war could end soon, but core disputes remain unresolved

Donald Trump stood before reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday and declared that a deal with Iran could come together quickly. Both sides want to close an agreement, he said. The conversations over the past day had been very good. Everything could end rapidly. It was the kind of optimism that moves markets—and it did. Oil prices fell sharply, with Brent crude dropping as much as 11 percent in a single session before stabilizing above $100 a barrel. Global stock markets rose. The prospect of peace, even tentative peace, had rippled through the world's financial systems.

But the proposal Washington had put on the table told a different story. According to Reuters sources, the American plan called for a formal end to the war—a single page of text that would stop the fighting. Everything else would wait. The nuclear program that Iran had built over decades. The Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil and gas had flowed before the war began. Sanctions relief. The reopening of shipping lanes. All of it deferred to a later phase of negotiations, to be worked out once both sides had agreed to stop shooting.

Tehran's response was still being formulated, but skepticism was already visible. Ebrahim Rezaei, a spokesman for Iran's parliamentary commission on foreign policy and national security, called the document less a serious proposal than a wish list. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran's parliament, posted sardonically on social media: "Operation Trust Me, Bro has failed." He suggested that American claims of progress were simply an attempt to reshape the narrative after failing to reopen the strait on their own.

The timing of Trump's optimism was curious. Just the day before, he had suspended a naval mission that had begun only two days earlier—an operation designed to force open the Hormuz passage. The reason, he said, was progress in peace talks. But according to NBC News, the real story was more complicated. Saudi Arabia had surprised and angered American officials by withdrawing permission for U.S. military aircraft to operate from a Saudi base or even cross Saudi airspace during the operation. The kingdom had apparently been caught off guard by Trump's announcement that American forces would escort ships through the strait. Rather than allow it, Riyadh had simply said no.

The negotiations themselves were being conducted on the American side by Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. If both sides accepted the preliminary memorandum, they would have thirty days to hammer out a complete agreement. But the sources involved in the mediation acknowledged that major gaps remained. The one-page document would not initially require concessions from either party—a way to get both sides to say yes to something. Yet it said nothing about restrictions on Iran's missile program, nothing about Tehran's support for allied militias across the Middle East, and nothing about the more than 400 kilograms of uranium Iran had already enriched to levels approaching weapons-grade material.

A senior Pakistani official involved in the talks expressed cautious hope. The priority, he said, was getting both sides to announce a permanent end to the war. The rest could be sorted out later, once direct negotiations resumed. But he also acknowledged that significant differences remained between the parties. Trump's confidence that everything would be resolved quickly seemed to rest on a narrow foundation: agreement to stop fighting now, and to argue about everything else afterward. Whether Iran would accept that bargain, and whether the issues deferred would prove resolvable once the guns fell silent, remained entirely unclear.