Mediators are still working with Iran and the United States on a possible deal to end the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to three officials who spoke with The Associated Press, with indirect discussions expected to resume Monday or Tuesday. The wire account, carried by CBS17.com and The Hill, describes talks that have continued through the eighth week of the war and a diplomatic track that has not closed even as the two sides remain apart on the terms.
According to a briefing given to one official and relayed by the account @FirstSquawk, the format for the next round keeps the parties in separate rooms: "MEDIATORS WILL HAVE INDIVIDUAL DISCUSSIONS WITH THE US AND IRAN ON MONDAY OR TUESDAY, WITH IRAN'S ARAGHCHI AND QATARI MEDIATORS STAYING IN THE US, ACCORDING TO AN OFFICIAL BRIEFED ON THE TALKS." Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi remaining on American soil, with Qatari intermediaries shuttling between the delegations, is the arrangement negotiators have settled on for now.
A second post from the same account, @FirstSquawk, restated the state of play shortly before noon Eastern: "OFFICIALS SAY MEDIATORS ARE STILL WORKING WITH IRAN AND THE US ON A POSSIBLE DEAL - AP." The two posts together describe a process that is alive on paper and stalled in practice — mediators are "still working," which is to say there is no agreement yet to announce, and the indirect format itself is the tell that the two governments are not sitting across from one another.
That diplomatic track is the backdrop President Trump addressed directly in remarks circulated by @clashreport. "With the exception of oil, which is lower than the Biden administration and we no longer have to worry about nuclear weapons with Iran because they're wiped out, everything is going down," the post quotes him saying. In the fuller video transcript carried with the clip, the president's phrasing wanders — "when the ranchers are wiped out" appears in the transcript at the point where the nuclear claim is made — before he returns to the inflation argument that anchored the rest of the remarks.
The transcript has him saying: "We have to say, with the exception of oil, which is lower than the Biden administration, and we no longer have to worry about nuclear weapons when the ranchers are wiped out. But with the exception of oil, everything is going down. We have it going down. We inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country, and it's going really down. 401Ks are at their all-time high. The stock markets are at their all-time high. Our country is doing really well. Thank you very much."
Read against the wire reporting, the president's claim that the Iranian nuclear program is "wiped out" is not something negotiators on either side have said. The AP account describes mediators working toward a deal to end the fighting and open the Strait of Hormuz — a shipping chokepoint whose closure has driven the oil prices the president cited. An agreement that reopens the strait is by definition not an agreement that has already removed the Iranian program from the board; it is an agreement about a war that is still being fought. The two accounts sit awkwardly beside one another, and the White House has not reconciled them.
Earlier on the same day, the Gulf economic track produced its own headline. @FirstSquawk carried word from Indian officials: "INDIA WORKING WITH UAE TO EXPAND PETROLEUM RESERVES SAYS GOYAL." The line lands in the middle of a war that has made the Strait of Hormuz a live logistical problem for every importer in Asia, and it points at the same anxiety the mediators are trying to address: reserves, not rhetoric, are what a country holds when a chokepoint closes.
Whether the next round of talks produces anything is not yet known. The officials who spoke with the AP put the resumption on Monday or Tuesday without describing what a deal would contain, whether sanctions relief is on the table, or what Iran would be asked to give up. What the two @FirstSquawk posts establish is narrow and concrete: mediators are still in the room — or in adjacent rooms — and the Iranians and Qataris have not gone home. That is the whole of it.
The exchange also did not produce a public statement from Tehran. The AP's sourcing is three unnamed officials; the identity of the mediators is left to the second post, which places Qatari go-betweens in the United States and names Iran's Araghchi as the principal staying on. None of that amounts to confirmation that a deal is close, and the reporting does not say one is.
Next News Network could not independently verify the claim that Iran's nuclear weapons capability has been eliminated.
The president's remarks, as transcribed, conflated two different claims — that the nuclear file is closed and that inflation is falling — under a single "with the exception of oil" construction. He cited 401(k) balances and stock market highs as evidence the country is "doing really well," and he returned twice to the comparison with the previous administration. What the transcript does not contain is any reference to the mediators, the Strait of Hormuz, Qatar, or the talks that the AP reported were still underway the same morning. The two stories ran on parallel tracks: one in the negotiating rooms, one at the podium.
For readers watching the region, the practical question is the strait. So long as it remains contested, the petroleum reserve work that @FirstSquawk attributed to Indian officials and their Emirati counterparts is the kind of preparation importers make when they are not confident a diplomatic breakthrough is imminent. The official briefed on the talks told the AP that discussions would happen "Monday or Tuesday" — a window, not a deadline, and one that has been described before without a deal following.
Our Take
The president says the Iranian nuclear program is wiped out. The AP's three officials say mediators are still working on a deal to end a war and reopen a waterway. Both of those things can be repeated in the same news cycle, but only one of them is being reported by people in the room, and it is not the one that came with a campaign-style coda about 401(k)s. The American people deserve a straight answer on what remains of Iran's program and what the talks are actually buying — not a victory lap delivered while Qatari mediators are still shuttling between delegations that will not sit at the same table. If the threat is truly gone, the negotiations should be easy to explain. They have not been.
