President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could come “tomorrow or the next day,” after saying a night earlier that “a lot of progress” had been made in talks with Iran. He framed the talks as moving fast enough that shipping through the chokepoint could begin normalizing within days.
Trump made the comments in Las Vegas, where he said Iran had sought negotiations after the U.S. prepared what he described as a massive military strike. He said the U.S. was “set for the biggest attack since World War II” before Iranian officials reached out and asked for talks, adding, “They called me and they said, ‘Please don’t do it, let’s talk.’”
The timing matters because the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s busiest energy corridors, and fighting in and around the waterway has sharply reduced shipping. Brent crude has fallen more than 8% from its recent high to about $80 per barrel, a sign markets are already reacting to the possibility that traffic could resume if any deal takes hold. The U.S. continues to enforce a naval blockade on Iranian ports.
But the path to any agreement is not as clean as Trump’s remarks suggested. JD Vance said on Wednesday that negotiations with Iran had been uneven and included both breakthroughs and setbacks, describing the process as one step forward, two steps back, then three steps forward and one step back. He said some officials in Iran want the conflict to end while “crazy radicals” want it to continue.
There is also still no confirmation that a reopening deal has been finalized, or what it would require from Iran. reported that Iran is weighing a proposal to let European countries help clear mines from the Strait of Hormuz, but no final decision has been made on that idea. The administration has said any agreement must ensure Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon, and Trump repeated that line in Las Vegas when he said, “But Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
For now, Trump is presenting the talks as close enough to count in hours, not weeks. The question left hanging is whether the next step is a signed deal, or another round of claims that progress is near while the waterway remains constrained.
