President Donald Trump said Monday the United States is negotiating with Iran to end the three-week-old war, declaring that the two sides had two days of “very good and productive conversations” that will continue throughout this week.
It was the president’s first acknowledgment of high-level talks between the two sides since the United States and Israel began bombarding Iran on Feb. 28, hammering the country’s military and leadership, and leading to a global energy shortage that has brought widespread economic pain.
The announcement of talks offered a pathway for the Trump administration to find a way to open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed by threatening strikes on shipping traffic. Tehran’s attacks on ships have paralyzed the 30 percent of global crude oil that goes through the waterway, giving Iran significant leverage.
“We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have major points of agreement,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “They went, I would say, perfectly. I would say that if they carry through with that, it’ll end that problem, that conflict.”
Conversations will continue by phone Monday, Trump said.
Iran and the United States have been negotiating a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST,” the president said earlier in a post to Truth Social. He said that he had told the U.S. military to postpone strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure for five days, “SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.”
Trump’s announcement sent markets up and energy prices diving, as investors bet Iran’s blockade of a key shipping chokepoint could soon end. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were each up more than 1 percent on Monday afternoon.
Trump on Saturday issued a 48-hour warning to Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on its power plants. That deadline was set to hit Monday evening before the president’s postponement. The U.S. military has been trying to avoid hits on Iranian energy infrastructure to avoid further pressuring global markets — and because strikes on power plants are a violation of the Geneva Conventions because of their effect on civilians. Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field on Wednesday.
The five-day window Trump announced Monday will buy markets another week without U.S. strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry rejected Trump’s characterization of talks.
“The U.S. president’s statements are within the framework of efforts to reduce energy prices and gain time to implement his military plans,” the semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported the ministry saying in a statement. “There are initiatives by regional countries to de-escalate tensions, and our response to all of them is clear: We are not the party that started this war, and all these requests should be referred to Washington.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Monday that the country maintains the same prerequisites for ending the war as before, according to a report carried on state media. Iranian officials have previously demanded that the United States and Israel cease their attacks before the start of negotiations. The officials have also asked that the United States commit to never attacking Iran again and agree to pay Iran compensation for war-related damages and loss of life.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has engaged in an intensive military campaign of his own, said Monday that he had spoken to Trump earlier in the day.
“President Trump believes there is an opportunity to leverage the tremendous achievements we have reached alongside the U.S. military to realize the goals of the war through an agreement, an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests,” he said in a statement, without saying that he shared Trump’s belief.
He said that Israel would continue to strike Iran and Lebanon, where the Israeli military has been pushing into the southern part of the country.
“We will safeguard our vital interests under all circumstances,” he added.
Oil prices fell immediately after Trump’s morning announcement, with the international benchmark Brent crude oil tumbling about 10 percent to hover near $100 a barrel, the lowest it has been since Wednesday. Prices remain about 30 percent higher than they were a month ago.
U.S. consumers have seen the most direct impact at the gas pump, where the national average was $3.956 a gallon Monday, according to AAA. That’s the highest gasoline price in nearly four years.
But reopening the Strait of Hormuz alone would not address another key U.S. security concern — the fate of Iran’s nuclear program and the estimated 440 kilograms (about 970 pounds) of highly enriched uranium that could eventually be used to fuel a nuclear bomb. The uranium is believed to be buried in canisters deep underneath the ground following U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last June.
Nor would leaving in place the current Iranian leadership answer the calls of the widespread protests across Iran in January demanding an end to the regime. Tehran’s brutal crackdown on those demonstrations helped spur Trump to act last month.
Trump didn’t specify which Iranian leaders the administration was speaking to. He told reporters on Monday that it wasn’t the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, with whom he said the United States has had no contact.
“We’re dealing with the man who, I believe, is the most respected and the leader. It’s a little tough. We’ve wiped out everybody,” he said, saying that his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were again in the lead of talking to Iranians. The pair were negotiating with top Iranian leadership before Trump’s attack last month.
Trump said that the talks extended beyond reopening the strait and that they were also discussing Iran’s nuclear stockpile and program.
“We want to see no nuclear bomb, no nuclear weapon, not even close to it,” Trump told reporters. “We want the nuclear dust. … I think we’re going to get that.”
Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim News Agency cast his Truth Social announcement as a retreat, writing on X: “Trump backs down.”
A report in Iran’s Fars News, a state-run media company, said there were no direct talks, or any mediated communication between Iran and the U.S., in the lead-up to Trump’s announcement Monday. Neither the White House nor the Iranian Foreign Ministry immediately replied to a request for comment.
Asked by reporters why the Foreign Ministry was denying that the talks were taking place, Trump said that because of the intense strikes, the Iranian government might be having difficulty with internal communications.
The president has said that the war has killed the first, second and third ranks of Iranian leadership. The new supreme leader — the son of the previous leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial strikes of the war — is affiliated with hard-line elements of the Iranian establishment.
Iran has been striking at its Arab neighbors in the region, as well as Israel, seeking to punish countries for their affiliation with the United States as well as to increase pressure to stop the war. Last week, both sides traded strikes on oil and gas infrastructure, adding pressure on already-squeezed global supplies.
The Trump administration has been scrambling to address the mounting issue, first dropping sanctions on Russian oil and then on Iranian oil — a decision that will channel energy revenue directly to Tehran and fund its war effort.
Regional leaders have been increasingly vocal about their desire to reach a truce.
“Whatever your view of Iran, this war is not of their making,” Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi wrote on X, minutes before Trump posted his announcement. Albusaidi had been working to broker a deal between Washington and Tehran ahead of the war.
“This is already causing widespread economic problems and I fear they promise to get much worse if the war continues. Oman is working intensively to put in place safe passage arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote.
Leaders of European countries that have long partnered with Washington to address Iran’s nuclear ambitions also welcomed the talks.
“We are working with others to see how we can develop that to a point of de-escalation. It’s very important that we get to that,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the House of Commons on Monday, saying that he was aware they were underway and that “I welcome” them.
It remains to be seen whether the market optimism that an end to the war is in sight will stick. There have been several points since the U.S. attacked Iran that comments by Trump or other administration officials suggesting a resolution to the conflict is imminent sent energy prices plunging, only to bounce back after more attacks on energy infrastructure by Iran and vows that it will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed indefinitely.
Analysts continued to warn of price increases if the strait does not quickly reopen.
Goldman Sachs warned in a report to investors Monday morning that Brent prices could exceed their record 2008 level — $147 per barrel — if oil does not resume flowing through the strait within 10 weeks.
“Volatility is likely to remain high,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the pricing app Gas Buddy, wrote in his newsletter Monday morning. “Traders will be weighing not only the credibility and duration of the pause, but also the risk that tensions could quickly re-escalate if negotiations falter.”
He wrote that the average price for a gallon of regular gas nationwide could exceed $4 this week.
Evan Halper in Houston, Todd C. Frankel and Susannah George in Washington, Suzan Haidamous in Beirut, Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv and Greg Miller in London contributed to this report.
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