Iran Presses For Hormuz Talks As Trump Rejects Ceasefire Offer

Tehran, Iran: Iran's foreign minister has insisted that the stand-off over the Strait of Hormuz can be settled only by negotiation, hours after President Donald Trump publicly rejected an Iranian proposal to stop the fighting and reopen the waterway.

Speaking on the NBC News programme "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said there was still room for diplomacy, though he described Washington as a partner that could not be trusted. "There's always hope for diplomacy," he said.

He made clear that Iran was also ready to fight. "We are fully prepared for the war to be resumed… We stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even [if] it comes to a doomsday war," he said. "At the same time, we stand ready for diplomacy. It is up to President Trump to choose."

The proposal Mr Trump turned down was put forward in New York during the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, where Mr Araghchi and Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, pressed the case for a halt to hostilities. Under the Iranian plan, Washington would take concrete steps first, and only then would Tehran ease its pressure on the strait. Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the US-based Center for International Policy, told CNN that the offer was "essentially the same bargain" as a deal discussed in June, "but with a very different sequence."

In his address to the assembly, Mr Pezeshkian said Iran had been "the victims of terrorism" and drew attention to the civilians killed since the United States and Israel began bombing his country at the end of February.

The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel through which a great share of the world's traded oil passes, has been at the centre of the crisis since Iran closed it in response to the bombing campaign. Its closure, and the risk of a wider war, have driven energy costs up far beyond the Gulf.

The contest itself is far older than this war. Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, the gateway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, have drawn outside powers for centuries, and the present confrontation is only the latest attempt to shape the Middle East by sea.

Ming China provides one of the earliest examples. In 1405 the Chinese Muslim admiral, explorer and diplomat Zheng He began the first of seven voyages across the Indian Ocean, commanding fleets of more than 300 vessels. He is recorded to have reached the town of Hormuz around 1414 and then Aden, in Yemen, passing through Bab el-Mandeb into the Red Sea.

That Pax Sinica did not seize the straits. It built a strong trading presence instead, through displays of naval strength, diplomatic missions and generous exchanges of gifts. Unlike the colonial powers that followed, Zheng He founded no colonies at Hormuz or along the Arabian coast, joining the trading system that Arab, Persian, Indian and East African merchants had already established.

The voyages also exposed the limits of overstretched maritime power. After Zheng He's final expedition in the 1430s, the Ming dynasty changed course and the journeys came to an end, the state unwilling to keep paying for its navy.

Beijing now invokes Zheng He to lend historical weight to its Middle Eastern ties, presenting modern investment in infrastructure, energy and ports such as Gwadar, in Pakistan, as the revival of an ancient and peaceful partnership reaching back to the pre-modern Silk Road.

Inside the United States, the cost of the war has arrived at the pump. By 11 September, diesel had risen above $6 a gallon for the first time, about 60% higher than immediately before the bombing of Iran began in February, according to an analysis of the fuel market published this month. Petrol prices were up by more than 44% over the same period. American consumers were reckoned to have spent an extra $100 billion on the two fuels between late February and mid-September.

In Europe the increases were smaller but still steep: petrol and diesel prices rose by 24% and 33% respectively, figures attributed to the Anadolu Agency. In Kenya, petrol rose by 20% and diesel by 30%.

The analysis linked the squeeze to a fall in global crude exports, from a monthly average of 106 million barrels a day in 2025 to 100 million barrels a day or below in 2026, attributed chiefly to Iran's closure of the strait and to the destruction of Russian refining capacity. It also pointed to a counter-blockade declared against Saudi Arabia by the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, and to the bombing of the kingdom's east-west oil pipeline, either of which, it said, could cut regional exports further.

On 14 September, Mr Trump urged Ukraine's president to stop attacking Russia's oil refining infrastructure, a call the analysis read as an attempt to bring diesel prices down. It followed the disclosure on 2 September that average American diesel prices had passed $6 a gallon for the first time. Kevin Hassett, who directs the White House National Economic Council, has warned that high fuel costs could feed into transport prices and inflation. The American Action Forum, a policy group, has argued that the reduced supply of diesel is leading refiners to favour it over other products, risking shortages elsewhere.

The analysis traced the approach to a group of influential policy papers, among them a 2019 study for the Rand Corporation, "Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground", whose recommendations included hindering Russian petroleum exports, and a 2019 Brookings Institution paper, "Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran." It said work by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Washington Institute had also shaped the strategy, and noted that the White House created a national energy dominance council in February 2025. It cited a 2025 report in the Financial Times that the CIA was helping Ukraine identify and prioritise targets for attack, and argued that Washington inserts itself into commercial dealings in which it is neither seller nor buyer.

The war has also sharpened a separate nuclear question. A civilian nuclear agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia, finalised in July 2026, is intended in part to check Chinese and Russian influence in the region. It initially caps uranium enrichment below 5% but would in future permit enrichment up to 20% without obliging the kingdom to sign the International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol, which allows intrusive inspections.

The Washington Post reported this month that a classified US intelligence assessment given to Congress concluded that Saudi Arabia has not ruled out developing nuclear weapons. The finding alarmed lawmakers and intensified criticism of Mr Trump's decision to help Riyadh build a civil nuclear programme. Democratic legislators and arms-control specialists warn that the framework offers the kingdom a direct route to the fissile material a weapon would need, at a moment of heightened tension with Iran. Critics also allege conflicts of interest involving administration associates, singling out Westinghouse Electric and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and adviser.

The State Department maintains that the agreement imposes realistic nonproliferation standards, and Saudi Arabia says its nuclear plans are entirely peaceful. Congressional Democrats are preparing legislation to block the pact during a 90-day statutory review; any such bill would be likely to meet a presidential veto.

The deal rests on a position the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, took long before the war began: that if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would move quickly to match it. Riyadh has used US-brokered normalisation talks with Israel to secure domestic enrichment capability and Chinese-backed ballistic missile infrastructure, and has warned that it could turn to China or Russia if Washington insisted on tight nonproliferation limits.

What happens next turns on whether Washington and Tehran can agree a sequence for pulling back. Iran's offer puts American action first, and the White House has so far refused it. Should the fighting resume, the strait's closure would keep weighing on oil and fuel markets far from the Gulf, while the nuclear question in Riyadh would gather its own momentum. For now both sides describe diplomacy as possible and war as likely, and the decision, as Iran's foreign minister put it, rests with the American president.