{"id":845,"date":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/iran-will-not-soften-hormuz-conditions-after-trump-rejects-the-seven-day-plan\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T03:33:09","slug":"iran-will-not-soften-hormuz-conditions-after-trump-rejects-the-seven-day-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/iran-will-not-soften-hormuz-conditions-after-trump-rejects-the-seven-day-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran will not soften Hormuz conditions after Trump rejects the seven-day plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday, 27 September, that Tehran would not soften its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, after President Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that he had rejected Iran\u2019s latest proposal. Deutsche Welle, quoting state broadcaster IRIB, recorded Araghchi as saying: \u201cOur conditions are clear, and any move toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz is contingent upon these conditions being fulfilled. We will not back down from them.\u201d He added that Iran had \u201cnever closed the door to diplomacy or negotiations, but at the same time, we have never backed down from our rights.\u201d This note is not a rewrite of the 22 September file in which Tehran said the strait could reopen in seven days if Washington eased military pressure and lifted the blockade of Iranian ports. The primary this morning is the rejection, and Iran\u2019s public insistence that Saturday\u2019s remarks are not yet a formal answer through the mediators.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Saturday language was blunt. Speaking at the White House, he said Iran had made a proposal and that he had rejected it. \u201cI reject their proposal \u2026 I rejected their deal,\u201d he said, according to Deutsche Welle. \u201cThey want to make a deal where they open the Strait immediately because they\u2019re losing so badly.\u201d On Sunday he told Axios that more talks with Iran could occur this week, while repeating that the offer on the table was not the one he wanted. \u201cThey want to make a deal, but it is not the deal that I want to make,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is what we would have maybe agreed to a year ago. They overplayed their hand.\u201d CNN\u2019s later write-through, carried by RNZ on Monday morning, recorded him calling the proposal \u201cunacceptable.\u201d Operators should treat those comments as a political rejection of Iran\u2019s sequencing, not as a UKMTO, JMIC or NAVAREA product and not as a sailing window.<\/p>\n

Araghchi\u2019s Sunday reply turned on the channel, not the substance. He told reporters that Tehran had seen \u201cthe first reaction from the US president, but so far, nothing has been conveyed to us by the mediators.\u201d Qatar and Pakistan have been the public go-betweens. \u201cWe are waiting for the mediators to convey the definitive positions to us, and we will make a decision based on them,\u201d he said. In a separate cut he added that Trump had \u201csaid many good things and also many contradictory things,\u201d and that Iran would wait for \u201cdefinitive opinions\u201d before deciding its next step. Hellenic Shipping News, reprinting Investing.com into Monday, 28 September, recorded the same line: Tehran was aware of Trump\u2019s comments but had not received an official response through Qatar and Pakistan, and a negotiated solution remained \u201cthe only way to resolve the impasse.\u201d The diplomatic picture that leaves for a master on passage is unusual. Washington has said the Iranian offer is unacceptable. Tehran says it is still awaiting a formal answer. Neither statement reopens the strait, and neither lowers the JMIC rating.<\/p>\n

What the seven-day plan asked for, and why Washington called it front-loaded<\/h2>\n

The proposal itself is already on this blog from 22 September. The Sunday restatement is useful only because US officials have now said, on the record, why they will not take it. Under the plan, Iran would restore normal maritime passage through Hormuz within seven days and resume nuclear talks if Washington met a set of conditions first. Araghchi has described those conditions as \u201cnothing more\u201d than the June memorandum of understanding that produced a ceasefire before fighting resumed. The published list includes a cessation of hostilities in the wider Middle East, including Lebanon; the release of frozen Iranian assets; a waiver of sanctions on Iranian oil; and an end to the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. The New York Times, cited in Al Jazeera\u2019s Saturday wrap, had Araghchi telling a private media briefing that the US steps would take four or five days, after which the strait could be reopened and talks on a \u201cfinal deal\u201d would start on day seven. That sequencing \u2014 relief first, waterway second \u2014 is the point US officials rejected.<\/p>\n

US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told CNN\u2019s State of the Union on Sunday that Trump had rejected the proposal because he does not believe Iran was negotiating in good faith. It was \u201cunacceptable,\u201d Waltz said, that Iran was \u201casking for everything up front.\u201d On NBC\u2019s Meet the Press he called the offer \u201ca pretty cynical attempt to put something on the table that they knew was unacceptable,\u201d and he returned to a problem that has frustrated US negotiators throughout the file: whether the people in the room can speak for Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. \u201cWho\u2019s calling the shots in Iran right now? Is it the IRGC? Is it the president? Is it the foreign minister?\u201d Waltz asked. A White House official had already told CNN that indirect discussions through mediators were \u201cpositive and constructive,\u201d while adding: \u201cThe United States is in a very strong position with control of the Strait of Hormuz, so we are not in a rush.\u201d Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019s earlier line was in the same key: any deal would involve \u201ca lot of hard work over a period of time.\u201d None of that is a transit instruction. It is Washington saying it can live with a managed, escorted, reduced-flow strait longer than Tehran can live with a closed export system.<\/p>\n

The same week\u2019s other US statements are context, not a substitute for the rejection. At the General Assembly, Trump had put the choice in maximal language: a deal that lets Iran \u201crebuild,\u201d or \u201cannihilate the Islamic Republic.\u201d The Wall Street Journal, citing US officials on Friday, reported that Trump had told staff a renewed bombing campaign was likely after the 3 November midterm elections; Trump declined to answer when asked whether bombing would resume after the vote. Iranian army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia said on Sunday, according to Reuters, that the United States could launch a renewed attack because of its \u201cbad regional situation,\u201d and that Tehran was prepared. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told the Assembly last week that Tehran would not permit freedom of navigation through Hormuz as long as US sanctions and the blockade remain in place, and told Al Jazeera that Iran had already talked with Washington \u201cfour or five times\u201d and no longer trusted the process. Those lines explain why Sunday did not produce a climb-down. They do not tell a master which TSS lane to use.<\/p>\n

The waterway is still a dual-control problem, not a reopened strait<\/h2>\n

For operators, the gap between the two capitals is operational as well as diplomatic. Iran still describes Hormuz as closed unless its conditions are met, and the Persian Gulf Strait Authority continues to treat undeclared or \u201cunauthorized\u201d transits as violations. The United States continues to describe the strait as under US control, to enforce a blockade of Iranian ports, and to facilitate non-Iranian commercial transits with coordinated protection. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said last week that US forces had facilitated more than 2,000 commercial transits and more than one billion barrels of crude through the strait \u2014 a claim already covered on this blog on 21 September and not a new daily print. Kpler\u2019s AIS-visible commodity counts through the same period have remained in the single digits to low teens on many days, with a standing caveat that AIS-off traffic is excluded. Those two data sets have not been reconciled. A political \u201cno\u201d from the White House does not close that gap, and it does not convert Wright\u2019s or Cooper\u2019s volume claims into a BMP all-clear.<\/p>\n

Economic pressure is moving on a separate track. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said over the weekend that Operation Economic Outcast was \u201cdelivering results,\u201d citing Turkey and Oman stopping Mahan Air flights, the UAE suspending flights by Iranian airlines, the UAE central bank blocking Bank Melli transactions to and from Iran, and Turkey revoking Bank Mellat\u2019s Istanbul licence. He thanked the UK, T\u00fcrkiye, Oman and the UAE. Those measures matter for Iran\u2019s aviation and correspondent-banking access. They do not change a war-risk quote, a PGSA non-compliance listing, or a master\u2019s obligation to answer NCAGS before a Hormuz transit. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have, according to the Wall Street Journal, been urging Washington not to ease the blockade prematurely. China, through President Xi Jinping\u2019s message to Trump last week, has kept a public preference for a return to the June Islamabad memorandum. None of those capitals has issued a sailing instruction.<\/p>\n

The 80-country joint statement read by Bahrain on 24 September, already covered on this blog, remains the political counterweight on tolls, conditions and \u201cillegal charges.\u201d Iran\u2019s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission has still only approved Articles 13\u201314\u201315 of the Hormuz bill \u2014 a 20 percent cargo-or-value seizure proposal that is not yet law. Sunday\u2019s exchange does not enact that bill, does not lift it, and does not replace UNCLOS transit passage with a US or Iranian permit system. What it does is freeze the sequence that some charterers had started to price as a seven-day reopen. Until a mediator conveys a written US position that Iran accepts, or until a UKMTO\/JMIC\/NAVAREA product actually changes, fixtures through Hormuz remain a war-risk, NCAGS and crew-refusal problem, not a diplomatic countdown.<\/p>\n

What Operators Should Note<\/h2>\n