Iran says Hormuz reopening plan cut to two days as US response is awaited, Araghchi tells MPs
Iran’s foreign minister said on Sunday that a Qatari-mediated plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could now be implemented in two days instead of seven, but that no definitive conclusion had been reached because the outcome depends on Washington’s response.
Iran’s foreign minister said on Sunday that a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could now be put into effect within two days, rather than the seven days originally proposed, but that the outcome still depends on the United States’ response. Abbas Araghchi, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said consultations with Qatari mediators were continuing and that no definitive conclusion had yet been reached, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency and Al Jazeera’s live coverage of the talks.
The change is in the timetable, not in a new agreement. Araghchi explained that Iran had originally put forward a seven-day plan for reopening the waterway. When Qatari mediators visited Tehran, they proposed cutting that period to five days or less, and the two sides have since worked it down further. Under the version now under discussion, the United States would implement a set of measures on the first day, and on the second day the strait would reopen and navigation would return to normal. That sequence, Araghchi stressed, only begins if Washington accepts Tehran’s terms.
Araghchi was explicit that the talks have not produced a result so far. “Consultations are ongoing but we have not yet reached a definitive conclusion because this conclusion depends on the answers the other side gives to our questions,” he said, as reported by IRNA. He also said there was no plan to meet an American delegation during the Iranian delegation’s current visit, which is focused on the Hormuz question through the Qatari mediators rather than on direct negotiations with Washington.
Tehran is also holding firm on its conditions. Araghchi told the parliamentary committee that Iran stands by its previously stated conditions, and reporting of his remarks lists them as including the lifting of sanctions imposed after the Islamabad memorandum, a reduction of United States forces in the region, the restoration of oil waivers, and the release of frozen Iranian funds, including funds held in Qatar. Those are Iran’s stated demands, not terms the United States has agreed to, and Araghchi said reopening the strait on those terms would pave the way for resumed negotiations with Washington on outstanding issues.
The Iranian delegation’s work in Doha is now in its third day, and the two-day proposal is the latest step in a mediation effort that has been running alongside the fighting. Earlier in the weekend, Iran’s security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, said he had reviewed a letter from United States Vice President JD Vance aimed at restarting talks, describing a change in Washington’s tone as a very positive sign. That letter, and the Qatari mediation around it, form the diplomatic track that Araghchi’s Sunday briefing was updating — a track in which the practical question of how quickly the strait could reopen has now become a central detail.
From the American side, the public signals on Sunday were a mix of openness to diplomacy and a refusal to be rushed. United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump had not made a decision on launching new attacks against Iran and preferred a diplomatic solution, according to Al Jazeera’s recap of the day’s developments. Trump himself said negotiations were going fine but that he was not in much of a hurry to reach a peace deal, a position that leaves the timing of any American answer to the two-day proposal uncertain.
A sharper American warning came at the Manama Dialogue security forum in Bahrain, where the United States’ Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Donald Blome, said Washington remained open to diplomatic dialogue but was prepared to go in another direction if maritime traffic through Hormuz was not restored to normal. Blome said Iran could not be permitted to hold the region and the global economy hostage, in remarks reported by Al Jazeera and carried by ANI. The warning underlines why the two-day plan matters beyond the negotiating room: for Washington, the test is whether shipping actually moves again, not merely whether a timetable is discussed.
The stakes of that test are visible in the wider region. The strait is the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which a large share of the world’s seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas passes, and its closure has already disrupted shipping, pushed Brent crude above 117 dollars a barrel, and rattled Gulf stock markets. In the past two days alone, a Qatari liquefied natural gas carrier was reported struck by unidentified objects in Gulf waters, and an Iranian oil tanker reached China after a three-and-a-half-month voyage despite the United States naval blockade, both incidents showing how exposed energy shipping in the region has become.
What happens next now turns on a single missing piece: the American response Araghchi said he was waiting for. If Washington accepts the conditions, or negotiates a version of them, the two-day clock Araghchi described could start, with measures on day one and reopened navigation on day two. If Washington rejects the conditions or offers different terms, the mediation would continue, possibly with a further revised timetable, while the military pressure on both sides remains in place. A third possibility is delay: with United States midterm elections on Tuesday, Washington may simply not answer in full until after the vote, leaving the strait closed and the diplomatic track in suspense.
For now, the honest position is that a faster reopening plan exists on paper, that Tehran says it is ready to implement it in two days, and that nothing has been agreed. News Orbit Live will update this story when the United States responds, when Qatari mediators confirm any change in the proposal, or when shipping through the strait actually resumes.
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