Seven months into a war neither side expected to last this long, the US and Iran are stuck in a diplomatic deadlock that is less about substance than about sequencing. Iran wants to cash in its wartime leverage — control of the Strait of Hormuz — before putting anything else on the table. The US wants everything resolved simultaneously, particularly Iran's nuclear programme. Qatar is shuttling between the two positions at the UN General Assembly in New York, and so far the gap has not closed. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left New York on Tuesday insisting he had not received a formal US response to Tehran's proposal: reopen the strait within seven days in exchange for sanctions relief, the unfreezing of an estimated $12 billion in Iranian assets, the lifting of the US naval blockade, and a wider regional ceasefire covering Lebanon and Yemen. Only after those conditions are met, Tehran says, would it discuss its nuclear programme. Trump reportedly rejected the offer, though Araghchi maintains no official response has been delivered through the Qatari channel. The information warfare around the talks is almost as intense as the diplomacy itself. Axios reported that Trump had offered Iran sanctions relief in return for nuclear concessions, citing US officials who described the talks as "positive and constructive" and said Tehran had indicated "flexibility" on nuclear issues. Trump denounced the report as a "hoax" on Truth Social and demanded Axios retract it. Whether this is genuine rejection or negotiating posture is the central ambiguity of the current moment. Iran's strategic calculus is straightforward. Before February 28, when US-Israeli strikes began, Tehran did not control the Strait of Hormuz and all commercial shipping passed freely. The war gave Iran something it never had: a chokepoint over one-fifth of the world's oil and gas shipments. Tehran will not surrender that leverage without extracting maximum concessions first, and it views the June Islamabad MoU — signed by both sides and since collapsed — as the baseline for any deal. As Ali Salehian of Iran's Governance and Policy Think Tank told Al Jazeera: "If the US doesn't fulfil its commitments based on the MoU, there is no guarantee that any kind of future deal would be sustainable." The US position, articulated by unnamed officials, is that a step-by-step approach lets Iran pocket concessions without ever reaching the nuclear file. Washington wants a comprehensive deal or nothing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described the economic campaign as the "economic asphyxiation" of Iran — a phrase that captures the bluntness of the strategy. Additional sweeping sanctions announced in August target not just Iran but countries trading with it, attempting to isolate Tehran from the global economy entirely. The human cost of this pressure campaign is not abstract. Iran has been under heavy sanctions for decades, with documented effects on access to medicines and healthcare. A Lancet Global Health study published last year estimated that more than 564,250 people worldwide die annually as a result of US sanctions regimes. Tehran frames this as "economic warfare," and the framing is not entirely rhetorical. The most likely near-term outcome is continued stalemate. Trump said last week he expects a deal after the November 3 midterms, not before — effectively acknowledging that domestic politics, not diplomatic readiness, sets the timeline. Araghchi told NBC that Iran is "fully prepared for the time for the war to be resumed," adding the pointed phrase "even if it comes to a doomsday war." Both sides prefer diplomacy but neither will concede sequencing. The war continues, the strait stays contested, and the global economy absorbs the cost.
