Trump signals shift to economic pressure on Iran over new military strikes

'We are low-keying it'

In a Sunday interview with Axios, President Donald Trump recast US policy toward Iran as a deliberate pivot away from fresh military action and toward attrition. 'We are low-keying it,' he said, describing Washington as 'only semi-negotiating' with Tehran while it monitors the economic damage inflicted by the war. The framing matters because it concedes that the June ceasefire never held, yet signals that the administration's preferred instrument from here is the naval blockade and the financial squeeze, not another round of strikes. It also lets Trump keep the military option in reserve — the 'semi' in 'semi-negotiating' — which functions as leverage in any backchannel conversation.

Oman's Strait of Hormuz mediation

The most concrete diplomatic track runs through Muscat. Iran says Oman-mediated talks over reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping have reached their 'final' stages, with both sides nearing agreement on coordinates for a new route. Tehran has set preconditions it knows Washington will resist in full: lift the naval blockade, halt military actions, and pay war damages. A ceasefire agreed in June collapsed weeks later over who controls the strait, and fighting has since resumed, with Iran carrying out intermittent strikes on US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. Any breakthrough would be incremental — a shipping corridor, not a political settlement — but it would also unwind one of the most acute chokepoint risks in the global energy market.

April naval blockade and Iran's 'very bad shape' economy

Trump credited a US naval blockade in place since April with deepening Iran's distress, telling Axios the country is in 'very bad shape' financially — high inflation, difficulty paying its own troops. He pointed to oil prices just above $75 a barrel as evidence that the economic pain is flowing one way. The picture is not, however, contained to the Iran file: recent reporting describes friction between Washington and Israel over the pace of US efforts to wind down fighting on multiple fronts, including Gaza and Lebanon, while Yemen's Houthis — aligned with Tehran — declared a separate naval blockade against Saudi Arabia last month. The economic-pressure strategy assumes Tehran eventually chooses talks over collapse, but the surrounding theatre keeps widening the number of parties whose behaviour the strategy cannot directly control.