US President Donald Trump is downplaying the prospect of reopening of the Strait of Hormuz as a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran fails to materialize, Axios reported on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“We are low-keying it,” Axios quoted him as saying in a phone call. The United States will not devote itself fully to negotiations with Iran, Trump reportedly said.<\/p>\n
“We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” he told the news outlet, arguing that the US naval blockade of Iranian ports has worsened the situation.<\/p>\n
“It will work out. It always works out. It’s like a chess game,” Trump said of the back-and-forth with Iran, according to Axios, which quoted US officials as saying Trump was focusing on de-escalation.<\/p>\n
Israeli Iran expert Danny Citrinowicz wrote on X that while Iran’s economic situation was undoubtedly not good, it was unlikely that economic pressure alone would force Tehran to capitulate at the negotiating table or to back away from key strategic interests such as its claim to control over the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Iran has recently dampened hopes of a swift reopening of the key waterway. The leadership in Tehran demanded substantial advance concessions from the United States before releasing the strait, which is critical to the international oil and gas trade.<\/p>\n
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council tied a reopening to several conditions including lifting the US naval blockade, withdrawing US forces from the region, fully lifting all sanctions against Iran and unconditionally releasing all frozen Iranian assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump is downplaying the prospect of reopening of the Strait of Hormuz as a diplomatic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[2747,38,34,10060,7998,101],"class_list":["post-242494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-axios","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-naval-blockade","tag-sanctions-against-iran","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117067217699163573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}