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President Donald Trump told Fox Business\u2019s Maria Bartiromo Wednesday that the U.S.-Iran war is \u201cvery close to being over\u201d\u2014even as negotiations haven\u2019t restarted and the U.S. and Iranian naval forces stare hard at each other across a blocked Strait of Hormuz.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s close to over, yeah. I view it as very close to being over,\u201d Trump told Bartiromo in an interview on Mornings with Maria.<\/p>\n
Trump has a reason to be upbeat; the stock market is near an all-time-high, ready to rally hard in celebration of a ceasefire. Yet there is a problem, namely, facts on the ground: The U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports is in its third day, Iran\u2019s military warned it would shut down all Persian Gulf shipping if the blockade continues, and Brent crude is still trading near $96 a barrel\u2014about 33% above pre-war levels.<\/p>\n
JD Vance, who led the U.S. delegation in Islamabad over the weekend, offered a notably less conclusive read of the situation Monday. \u201cThe ball is very much in their court,\u201d Vance said. \u201cThe Iranians are going to determine what happens next.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Associated Press, the two sides have an \u201cin principle agreement\u201d to pursue further talks, with mediators pushing to resolve Hormuz and Iran\u2019s nuclear program before Trump\u2019s April 7 truce formally expires next week.<\/p>\n
Trump acknowledged the U.S. \u201cis not finished\u201d while simultaneously predicting a deal. \u201cI think they want to make a deal very badly,\u201d he told Bartiromo.<\/p>\n
Blockade update\u00a0<\/p>\n
The blockade was \u201cfully implemented\u201d on Tuesday, CENTCOM wrote on X Wednesday morning, after military officials announced that they forced six merchant vessels departing from an Iranian port to turn back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn less than 36 hours \u2026 U.S. forces have completely halted economic trade going into and out of Iran by sea,\u201d the statement said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gregory Brew, a senior oil analyst at Eurasia Group, said it is \u201cso far, a bit hard to determine precisely how aggressively the U.S. intends to enforce this blockade.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome tankers have been turned back. Some are holding their positions inside the strait,\u201d Brew wrote on X. \u201cBut traffic in and out of Iranian ports has not halted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of the actual movement in the port, Iran\u2019s response came soon after. Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi warned that if \u201cthe aggressive and terrorist U.S.\u201d continues the blockade and \u201ccreates insecurity for Iranian commercial ships and oil tankers,\u201d Iran\u2019s armed forces \u201cwill not allow any kind of export and import to continue in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the Red Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the military plays bad cop, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the Iranian semi-official news agency ISNA that Tehran does not want war or conflict, and has always sought stability.<\/p>\n
However, he added that he \u201cwill not be forced to surrender. Any attempt to impose will or force Iran to surrender is doomed to failure, and the people will never accept such an approach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The talks in Pakistan<\/p>\n
The core ask at the heart of negotiations\u2014that Iran permanently surrender its nuclear enrichment program\u2014is one that Tehran has refused for decades, even through sanctions, assassinations of its scientists, and now, a seven-week bombing campaign that killed its Ayatollah and, as Trump said, many of the other candidates to take over the government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So Vance, according to the New York Times, brought a softer version to Islamabad, a proposal for a two-decade moratorium on uranium enrichment. Iran reportedly countered up to five years. Trump, back in Washington, told the New York Post that even the deal Vance brought was unacceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been saying they can\u2019t have nuclear weapons,\u201d he said, according to the Post, \u201cso I don\u2019t like the 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Trump #Iran #war #close #overdespite #deal #live #blockade #threats #mounting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump told Fox Business\u2019s Maria Bartiromo Wednesday that the U.S.-Iran war is \u201cvery…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[2194,4906,5512,1419,110,518,1826,376,5858,1369,1313,2183,8606,8607,2196,4884,721,684],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}