US-Iran talks take sudden, uncertain shift with sweeping claims on both sides

President Trump sprinted ahead Friday to take a victory lap celebrating what he said was Iran’s agreement to open the Strait of Hormuz and a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. 

But conflicting statements from Iranian officials and Israeli pushback on the terms of the ceasefire with Lebanon are raising doubt about the president’s actual successes.  

“I’m concerned that, in this round, Iran came out with the upper hand,” Danny Citrinowicz, senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, posted on the social platform X.  

Trump began Friday morning with a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in effect and celebrated what he called the opening of the “Strait of Iran,” referring to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Embassy in Zimbabwe joked that the term meant Trump was in a good mood. 

Then Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, wrote on X late Friday that with the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continuing, the waterway “will not remain open.”

“The President of the United States made seven claims in one hour, all seven of which were false,” he wrote, according to a translation.

The waterway otherwise remains “effectively closed” as vessel movements are confined to corridors that require approval, according to Kpler, a go-to source for global trade intelligence. 

Still, markets earlier Friday responded with “cautious optimism, reflected in a short-term pullback in prices,” but any meaningful recovery in the passage of oil, gas and other goods including fertilizer “depends on a gradual return of shipowners, beginning with a tentative ‘first movers’ phase that may restore only a fraction of capacity,” Kpler said Friday.

“A full normalization in trade and confidence is likely to take months, not weeks.” 

The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon is “essential” for further progress in U.S.-Iran talks, but the Strait of Hormuz remains the top concern for Trump over its impact on the global economy, according to Jon Hoffman, a research fellow at Cato Institute. 

“This war has quickly become a contest of who can absorb the most pain. Here, time is on Iran’s side — the longer the strait remains closed, the greater the political costs will be for President Trump,” Hoffman told The Hill on Friday. 

Larry Haas, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), said he does not expect the........

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