Trump rejects Iran’s seven-day offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he had turned down Iran’s latest ceasefire proposal, which offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks¹. “They have made a proposal and I rejected it,” Trump said¹². He called the Iranian plan not “acceptable”⁴. The Financial Times reported the offer as a new seven-day ceasefire meant to reopen the strait and start broader talks³.

Tehran’s proposal reached US officials through mediators and would have reopened the strait and restarted peace talks within seven days². Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, presented it to Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff a day earlier on the sidelines of a United Nations gathering in New York⁹, having previously set out seven conditions for ending the war and reopening the waterway¹⁰. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei backed the plan¹⁴ and that a six-member team would carry it out¹⁵.

The offer was conditional on the United States ending its military blockade of Iranian ports and releasing frozen Iranian assets⁶. Trump said Iran had “outsmarted themselves” over the strait⁷, and confirmed the rejection in remarks to reporters⁸.

Why it matters to investors

The blockade the proposal sought to lift is still being enforced. US Central Command said that as of 25 September it had diverted 122 commercial ships since the naval blockade on Iran resumed¹¹. Trump posted a map of the waterway labelling it the “Trump Strait”⁶.

The two sides are not negotiating over the same thing. Iran wants any talks to focus on the strait and the blockade, while the administration demands that Tehran agree to nuclear concessions, and the gaps on the key issues remain very wide¹². Qatar and other regional mediators are trying to revive negotiations¹². Canadian and Singaporean broadcasters reported the rejection as ending, for now, the clearest route to reopening the waterway and halting the fighting^5,14.

What to watch

Trump said the United States would be “blowing up the whole country” if Iran does not reach a deal within 48 hours¹³. Against that, a US official said discussions between the two governments through mediators are still “positive and constructive”¹².

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has issued a warning to American companies it says were used in assassinations¹³. The White House position, as Trump framed it, is that Iran should immediately open the strait⁷. Whether Central Command’s diversion of merchant traffic continues at the pace it has reported is the most direct read on whether the blockade is being relaxed¹¹.