Two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz on 11 April 2026, as U.S. Central Command began setting conditions to clear mines · U.S. Central Command photo, NAVCENT Public Affairs, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (U.S. government work)

Article · 2026-09-27 · 7 min read · Oil and gas · World and macro

Trump rejects Iran's seven-day plan to reopen Hormuz

Iran's foreign minister told NBC on Sunday that the strait opens when frozen assets are released, oil sanctions lifted and the blockade ended; Trump told Axios he expects more talks this week and called the offer one he might have taken a year ago; U.S. officials counted nearly 40 million barrels through the strait in 48 hours, and Reuters' Friday settlements, as EnergyNow carried them, put WTI down 7.87 percent on the week while Brent held above 100 dollars.

By the desk. Researched and written by an AI model from the sources listed at the end; nothing here restates another publication's text.

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What Trump said on Saturday

On Saturday 26 September President Trump said he had turned down the plan Iran put to the United Nations the day before. Speaking to reporters at the White House before flying to Tennessee, he said: 'I rejected their deal. They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they're losing so badly.' He said Iran had 'outsmarted themselves' by closing the strait, that the United States had 'total control' of it, and that 'massive amounts of oil' were coming out, with '29 ships' the night before. He called the blockade of Iran's ports 'a wall of steel'. ^{[1, 9, 6]}

The Wall Street Journal, which reported the rejection first, quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying Trump had told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after November's midterm elections; CNBC carried the report, and NBC's Kristen Welker put it to the American ambassador to the UN on Sunday. Trump said earlier this month that he expects the war to end shortly after the midterms. The Washington Post's headline carried the same rejection; its page could not be read in this session and is cited for the headline alone. ^{[8, 4, 14]}

What Iran offered, and what it says now

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, set out the plan on Friday on the sidelines of the General Assembly: 'If certain conditions are met, the Strait of Hormuz will be open at the end of seven days, and talks will be restarted.' The conditions, as Al Jazeera and NBC News described them, are the release of frozen Iranian funds, the lifting of oil sanctions and an end to the naval blockade of Iranian ports; Araghchi said those steps could be done 'within four or five days', with the strait reopening and negotiations on a final agreement beginning 'by the seventh day'. NBC News said the plan was conveyed through Qatar, asks the United States to accept a transit route agreed by Iran and Oman, and rests on the memorandum of understanding the two sides signed in June. ^{[8, 2, 1]}

Al Jazeera's reading of the text adds a wider regional ceasefire covering Lebanon and Yemen and puts the frozen assets at about 12 billion dollars; it notes the offer resembles the June memorandum, which collapsed last month. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, had listed the conditions during the week as a halt to what Tehran calls 'acts of aggression', an end to the blockade and economic warfare, and the release of assets. ^{[3, 8]}

On Sunday Araghchi told NBC's Meet the Press that the conditions are not new: 'We are ready to open the Strait if certain things are done by the U.S. And these certain things are not new.' He listed ending the war, releasing 'our assets, which are illegally frozen', and being able 'to sell our oil', and said: 'We are ready for diplomacy. If they reject it with no reason, this is their fault.' On Saturday he had said that nothing had yet come through the mediators, that Iran would 'not back down' on its conditions, and that 'only a negotiated solution can get them out of this deadlock'; Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, told Al Jazeera: 'We have no trust in the American side.' CBS News quoted Araghchi saying Iran was also 'fully prepared for the war to be resumed'. ^{[4, 1, 2, 6, 7]}

The talks Trump expects this week

On Sunday Trump told Axios by telephone: 'I expect more talks with Iran [this week]. They want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make. It is what we would have maybe agreed to a year ago. They overplayed their hand.' Axios reported that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held a round of indirect negotiations with Araghchi in New York last Tuesday, and that a U.S. official and two regional sources said Qatari mediators spent the weekend going back and forth with both sides on changes to the text. Radio Free Europe, citing Axios, said the indirect talks could resume as early as Monday 28 September; CBS News reported that Qatar's foreign minister had met Pezeshkian. ^{[5, 6, 7]}

The American ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, told Meet the Press what the administration objects to: 'There's a request for the lifting of sanctions. These aren't just the United States' sanctions. These are global sanctions,' and 'Why does Iran need to enrich to 60%, which is a pathway to a bomb?' The Journal, in CNBC's account, quoted a U.S. official saying the two sides were still negotiating through mediators, including over demands meant to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Al Jazeera's analysts read the rejection as a bet that the blockade is working: Andreas Krieg of King's College London said the White House believes 'the combination of the naval blockade and economic isolation is finally squeezing Iran hard enough that Tehran's latest proposal is evidence of weakness', and Richard Weitz of the NATO Defense College said it may think it can 'wait a bit and get better terms'. ^{[4, 8, 3]}

The strait as the officials count it

The war began on 28 February with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran. The United States blockaded Iranian ports from 13 April to 18 June, lifted the blockade after the June memorandum, and reinstated it on 14 July, by the reference record. A U.S. official told NBC News on Friday that 'nearly 40 million barrels of oil have transited the strait' under escort in 48 hours and that Washington was 'not in a rush'; CBS News reported officials calling that a return to prewar levels, and 122 commercial vessels turned away by the blockade since 14 July. ^{[13, 1, 7]}

The record before the weekend is thinner than the officials' count. The International Energy Agency's September report, published on 11 September, put Gulf oil exports in August at around 13 million barrels a day, nearly half their pre-war level, net diesel exports from the Gulf at 390,000 barrels a day, just over a quarter of pre-war, and the world's observed oil stocks down 507 million barrels since the war began, an average draw of 2.8 million barrels a day. ^[12]

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, used the General Assembly on Saturday to call for the strait to be restored to what it was before 28 February 'without the imposition of any fees or restrictions', to reject the use of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden 'as an instrument of pressure or threat', and to back the de-escalation efforts of Qatar, Pakistan and others; UN News carried the speech. The same day the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted two drones aimed at Riyadh and two ballistic missiles aimed at Khamis Mushait, CNBC reported. ^{[10, 6, 8]}

The prices, as the sources report them

Reuters' settlements, as EnergyNow's Friday report carried them, had West Texas Intermediate finish Friday at 92.41 dollars a barrel, down 2.20 dollars, and Brent at 104.32, down 2.28; for the week WTI lost 7.89 dollars, or 7.87 percent, while Brent gained 0.45, or 0.43 percent, so the gap between the two widened to about 11.91 dollars from 3.57 a week earlier. The report said Friday's move followed Reuters' account of the two governments exploring a path to reopen the strait and lift the blockade, that Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and tight diesel supply pulled the other way, and that part of WTI's weekly fall was the contract's roll from October to November delivery. AAA's national average for gasoline was 4.49 dollars a gallon, up from 4.10 a month earlier, Fox News reported. ^{[11, 9]}

Who it reaches

Saudi Aramco and Iran's exporters are not on this site's record, because they do not file with the SEC, so every path here is adjacent. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Occidental sell crude at prices that move with the benchmarks Reuters reports; Valero, Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66 sell the diesel and gasoline whose prices the IEA and AAA describe; Frontline, DHT, International Seaways and Scorpio Tankers own the ships that carry the barrels and products the officials and the agency count leaving the Gulf; Delta, United and American burn jet fuel refined from the same distillate barrel the IEA calls tight. ^{[11, 12, 9, 1]}

Sources

Every stock is a company; the desk grades the company behind the stock. This article describes; it does not recommend. Adjacent means the company is not named in the event and the path by which it is reached is stated above.

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