US President Donald Trump has turned down Iran’s latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, making clear that Washington will not lift its naval blockade or ease other sanctions unless Tehran agrees to a comprehensive nuclear agreement, according to people familiar with the ongoing discussions.
In recent days, Iran is reported to have floated a plan that would see the strategic waterway reopened to commercial traffic in exchange for an end to the US-led blockade and a pause in broader nuclear talks, effectively “decoupling” the crisis over shipping lanes from negotiations on its atomic programme. Trump has rejected this sequencing, however, with aides saying he views Iran’s nuclear ambitions as the core security threat and does not want to surrender leverage while its programme remains unresolved.
Officials say the White House is instead insisting that any arrangement to restore safe passage through the strait must be embedded in a larger deal that caps or rolls back Iran’s nuclear activities and addresses verification, rather than being treated as a stand‑alone confidence‑building measure. The US position, echoed publicly by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is that Washington cannot accept a scenario in which Iran retains de facto control over who uses the vital waterway or collects fees in return for reopening it, even under the guise of a temporary compromise.
The deadlock has left the conflict at an uneasy impasse, with the Hormuz chokepoint still heavily restricted and global energy flows curtailed, adding sustained pressure to oil and gas markets and raising fears of miscalculation at sea. Iranian officials, for their part, have accused the US of clinging to “maximalist” demands and have signalled that they will not accept any deal that, in their view, allows Washington to keep “dictating” terms while the war continues.
