Margarita Stancati

So the two sides have been trading proposals over the last few weeks.

Iran responded to the latest U.S.

proposal recently, and it essentially said this is how the fighting could end.

There will be this gradual reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic so long as the U.S.

lifts its blockade.

But it's also saying we don't want to talk about the nuclear program right now.

We will negotiate that, but we want to do that separately over the next 30 days.

And the response from Trump has been that this is completely unacceptable.

So we're still waiting to see how the Iranians will respond to that.

But on the nuclear issue specifically, Iran has shown some degree of flexibility, some opening.

It has proposed to have some of the highly enriched uranium diluted and the rest of it transferred to a third country.

So it is possible that we will eventually see an agreement on that front as well, but not right now.

Tehran's deal essentially offered to stop its attack in the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a full end to the war and the lifting of the US blockade of the Iranian ports.

And as part of the deal, also, Tehran wanted to postpone any discussions about Iran's nuclear program.

And the US sees that as evidence that the blockade as an instrument of economic coercion is working.

The U.S.

and Iran have both weaponized this trade of Hormuz with the goal of forcing the other to rethink its political calculations.

But this comes at a cost.

So Iran closed this trade early on in the conflict and effectively using this critical waterway to hold the world economy hostage.

The US responded with a naval blockade of its own, dealing a devastating blow to Iran's economy.