Investing.com – U.S. President Donald Trump has said a leading Iranian official has asked for a halt to hostilities in the war in the Middle East, adding that Washington will not consider the request until the is reopened to tanker traffic.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied that it had sought a ceasefire, state media reports and a report from Al Jazeera showed. Tehran also denied that direct talks with Washington had taken place.
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The war showed few signs of de-escalation on Wednesday evening, with U.S.-Israeli attacks continuing to batter Iranian targets, sparking retaliatory strikes from Tehran.
Trump says Iran sought ceasefire
In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump said Iran’s “New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!” Iran has a new supreme leader, but not a new president.
He said the White House will consider the offer when the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway off of Iran’s southern coast through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply squeezes, is “open, free, and clear.” The strait has been effectively shuttered for weeks, with vessels attempting to make the passage facing the threat of Iranian attacks.
Until the strait is unblocked, “we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!” Trump wrote.
Elsewhere, Trump told Reuters that the U.S. would be “out of Iran pretty quickly” and later return for “spot hits” if needed. He previously suggested on Tuesday that U.S. military forces will leave Iran in two to three weeks, saying the goal of eliminating the country’s nuclear threat had been achieved.
He also said the U.S. does not need a formal deal with Iran to withdraw from the country, claiming that “[i]t will take 15-20 years for them” to rebuild from “what we’ve done to them. The president added that the responsibility for reopening the Strait of Hormuz should fall on countries that depend on it, telling reporters there is “no reason for us to do this.”
Comments from Iranian officials described Trump’s claims of a ceasefire request as “false and baseless,” state media showed, while officials maintained their stance that no direct communication with the U.S. had taken place.
Ebrahim Azizi, head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament, said that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen, but only for “those who comply with the new laws of Iran.” Iran’s parliament had earlier approved a proposal which would impose a toll on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
“Trump has finally achieved his dream of ’regime change’ — but in the region’s maritime regime,” Azizi said in a social media post.
Military operations are ongoing in Iran, with Trump noting that the U.S. has “knocked out tremendous amounts of missile-making facilities.” Israel has continued to target sites in Tehran and central Iran, as well as Beirut in Lebanon, while Iran has sent projectiles at Israel and Persian Gulf countries.
Trump says he is considering pulling out of NATO
Trump is set to address the nation on the Iran war at 21:00 ET on Wednesday. He told Reuters that he will state during the speech that the U.S. is considering pulling out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Earlier, Trump said in an interview with Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that he is strongly mulling withdrawing from NATO following the group’s decision not to join his war in Iran. He called the alliance a “paper tiger.”
Trump has frequently lashed out at U.S. allies, including NATO members in Europe which have refused to allow the U.S. to use bases in their countries as staging grounds for his more than month-old assault on Iran.
One target of Trump’s ire was the United Kingdom, whose Prime Minister Keir Starmer has so far rebuffed calls from Washington to get involved in the offensive. Trump said Starmer can “do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter.”
Starmer responded by saying that “whatever the noise, I’m going to act in the British national interest in the decisions I make.” A founding member of NATO, the U.K. has traditionally been a staunch U.S. ally.
Formally withdrawing from NATO is regarded as difficult. A 2023 law requires that the president cannot suspend, terminate or withdraw the U.S. from the NATO treaty without approval from two-thirds of the Senate or a new act of Congress.
Earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said the U.S. would have to re-examine its relationship with NATO, and whether the alliance had become a “one-way street” in which Washington is ready to defend European nations but is not allowed access to European military bases.
Stocks rise, oil falls amid hopes for Iran ceasefire
Wall Street has cheered the prospect of de-escalation in the Iran conflict. Futures linked to the main U.S. averages gained on Wednesday, indicating a possible extension to a rally in the benchmark S&P 500, tech-heavy , and blue-chip in the prior session.
Stocks on Wall Street have fallen every week since the onset of the Iran war in late February.
Oil prices — which clocked a record monthly gain on March amid disruptions caused by the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz — dipped in the wake of Trump’s comments. Futures contracts expiring in June for , the global benchmark, were last down by 1.7% at $102.25 a barrel, after having briefly slipped under the $100 threshold. Prior to the outbreak of the war, Brent was exchanging hands at around $70 a barrel.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell 2.4% to $98.92 per barrel.
Analysts have suggested that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, or even a potential Iranian toll on vessels passing through the strait, could keep oil prices elevated in the near-term.
“De-escalation hopes have given markets a lift, but we think the effects of the war would, in many cases, persist even if the war did end soon,” said Thomas Mathews, Head of Markets, Asia Pacific, at Capital Economics.