Trump Halts Iran Strike and Sets Monday Talks on Hormuz, and Oil Falls Nearly 5%

US President Donald Trump said early Sunday he had called off a planned attack on Iran and that negotiations would begin Monday, framing the sequence as a deal on the Strait of Hormuz first and then a separate agreement on Iran's nuclear program. Trump set no deadline for a final accord. Al Jazeera reported Trump described the coming talks as taking "the form of a negotiation," while Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said separate talks with Oman over managing shipping through the strait were in their final stages.

Tehran then contradicted the central premise of Trump's announcement. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, told reporters in Tehran on Monday that "we do not have any negotiations with the United States at the moment," and said the only talks under way are with Oman on a temporary route for safe passage through the strait. Baghaei said mediators are carrying messages between the two governments but that no direct or indirect negotiations have started, according to reporting on his news conference. He added that an understanding with Oman would not by itself reopen the strait while what he called US aggression continues, and that any future talks depend on Washington changing its conduct. Trump had said the day before that a deal covering Hormuz and Iran's denuclearization was imminent.

Crude prices fell sharply after Trump's announcement and stayed lower on Monday as investors reduced the war risk premium. The Hindu reported Brent crude fell about 4.6% to near $83.85 a barrel and US West Texas Intermediate fell about 4.7% to near $80.66, reversing part of a gain of more than 20% recorded last month when fighting resumed and attacks on tankers near Oman deterred shippers from loading Gulf oil. Russia's RIA Novosti attributed the decline directly to Trump's statement that talks would resume.

The move came the same weekend that OPEC+ agreed to add 188,000 barrels a day of production from September, completing the unwinding of the second of three voluntary cut packages first introduced in 2023. The near-term supply effect is limited while Hormuz, a conduit for roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil, stays constrained, but the group has signaled it intends to regain market share.

The two sides now describe the same events in incompatible terms. Washington presents the pause as leverage that produced a diplomatic opening and a negotiation about to begin. Tehran presents the Oman channel as a technical arrangement over navigation it was already pursuing, and denies that it is negotiating with the United States at all. What both accounts share is that no signed deal yet exists, and the ceasefire remains reversible.