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US-Iran Deal Still Far Off: Why the War Won't End Soon Yet

byAbdulrahim Mughal -
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Oil tankers at sea

Photo: Pexels

On the day Americans voted in the midterm elections, the war between the United States and Iran produced a strange pair of headlines. Mediators said a deal was still possible. Tehran said it was still far away. And in the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway at the centre of it all, three tankers were reported to have hit mines.

That contradiction is the story. After eight days of negotiation over a draft agreement, the two sides are not arguing about whether to talk. They are arguing about the order in which everything happens — and in a war that has already lasted more than eight months, sequence is not a detail. It is the whole disagreement.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday, 3 November, that Iran and the United States remain far from a deal to end the war, despite intensified diplomatic efforts. The official's warning, carried by Reuters and republished around the world, was blunt: Tehran would not accept what it called Washington's "excessive demands," and its conditions must be met before the Strait of Hormuz can reopen. Nuclear talks, the official added, could only start afterwards.

Hours earlier, the United States had carried out what one US official described as "defensive" strikes on Iran's Qeshm Island, in the Strait of Hormuz, targeting surface-to-air missiles said to have been used against US assets. Iranian state media reported explosions on Qeshm and Hengam islands and near Bandar Abbas. The Wall Street Journal, citing US officials, reported the strikes first. Small-scale strikes of this kind, the Journal added, have been carried out and kept secret to avoid signalling any US intent to resume a major military campaign.

So on a single Tuesday: airstrikes, a mediation push, a flat rejection of the other side's terms, and fresh explosions at sea. Anyone looking for a clean turning point will not find one here. What follows is what actually happened, why the two sides are stuck, and what would have to change for that to shift.

What happened on Tuesday

The day began with the Qeshm strikes. Qeshm is a large Iranian island sitting at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel between Iran and the Musandam Peninsula through which, before the war, roughly a fifth of the world's crude oil and natural gas supplies moved. Its position is why it matters: whoever controls the waters around Qeshm can threaten, or protect, the shipping lane the global economy depends on.

By Tuesday afternoon, a second incident had been added to the day's ledger. Iran's Revolutionary Guards Navy said three tankers had struck naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz and caught fire after entering unauthorised shipping lanes with their navigation and identification systems switched off, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. The Revolutionary Guards also claimed to have shot down US drones over the coastal area of Bandar Khamir. Those claims come from one side of the war and have not been independently verified; they are reported here as claims, not established facts. What is not in doubt is the market's reaction: traders treated the day as a reminder that the strait is still a live war zone, not a reopened highway.

Oil prices told the same story in numbers. Brent crude had settled on Monday at $104.77 a barrel, down $8.66 or 7.63 percent, its sharpest daily fall in months, after weekend diplomacy raised hopes of a deal. On Tuesday it bounced back: up 48 cents to $105.25 in early Asian trade, and nearly $107 by midday UAE time, according to The National. West Texas Intermediate followed the same path, rising to around $98. The pattern is worth noting because it has repeated all year: diplomacy takes the war premium out of the oil price, and a single strike report puts part of it back.

The draft deal — and the gap inside it

The document at the centre of the talks has been under negotiation for eight days. Qatari mediators travelled to Tehran on Monday night to discuss a version of it, and Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, said on Tuesday that both sides remained committed to mediation and were reviewing proposals put forward by the mediators. The Qatari team had since returned to Doha, he said, but talks were continuing.

"There are intensive joint regional efforts underway to avoid escalation," al-Ansari told a news briefing. "If there were no glimmer of hope, there would be no negotiations... and as a mediator, we cannot lose hope."

Tehran's public position, however, draws a hard line around sequencing. The senior Iranian official told Reuters that mediators were "working hard to narrow gaps," but that Tehran's conditions must be met if the US wants Hormuz reopened, and that nuclear talks could only begin after that. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who leads Iran's negotiating team, told parliament on Tuesday that Tehran had given a "strong and rational response" to Washington and that "the ball is in America's court."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei added a concrete detail on Monday: Iran's revised plan, he said, could be implemented within two days if Washington ends its naval blockade and meets Iran's demands, including sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets. That two-day claim is best read as a negotiating signal rather than a timetable — it tells Washington what Tehran says it needs, not what Washington has agreed to give.

On the American side, President Donald Trump sounded a different note on Monday. He raised doubts about whether he would follow through on a threatened resumption of military strikes against Iran after the midterm elections, saying he believed Tehran wanted a deal as soon as possible. Asked directly by reporters whether he was considering striking Iran after the midterms, he replied: "No."

Put those statements side by side and the gap becomes clear. Washington wants a deal that constrains Iran and reopens the strait; Tehran wants sanctions relief, unfrozen assets and an end to the naval blockade first, and treats the strait's reopening as something it grants in return — not something it concedes upfront. Each side is asking the other to move first. That is why eight days of talks have produced a draft but not a deal.

Why Hormuz is the lever — for both sides

Understanding this standoff requires understanding what the Strait of Hormuz actually is. At its narrowest, the strait is about 33 kilometres wide. Before the war began in late February 2026, it carried roughly a fifth of global crude oil and liquefied natural gas. Traffic through it has fallen sharply since the fighting started, according to Reuters, and the war's other fronts — Houthi attacks on shipping, strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure, and the fighting that has repeatedly closed Saudi airports — have kept the region's energy routes under strain all year.

For Iran, the strait is leverage. Threatening it, mining it, or closing it outright forces the world's largest economies — above all China, India, Japan and South Korea, which depend heavily on Gulf energy — to press Washington for a settlement. For the United States and its Gulf allies, keeping the strait open is the strategic prize, and the naval blockade is the counter-lever: it squeezes Iran's own oil exports and its access to the outside world.

That symmetry is exactly what makes a deal so hard. Neither side can give up its lever without getting something concrete in return, and neither trusts the other to deliver after the fact. Iran fears that reopening the strait first would leave it with nothing to trade for sanctions relief. Washington fears that lifting sanctions first would leave it with nothing to trade for nuclear constraints and a durable end to attacks on shipping. The draft deal exists to solve that trust problem — but a draft is not a solution until both sides accept the same sequence.

The midterm clock

Timing explains why this week, in particular, is so tense. The conflict launched by the United States and Israel in February has been shadowed for weeks by a threat: that major military action could resume after the US midterm elections on Tuesday. That threat shaped the diplomacy around it. Mediators raced to get a framework in place before the vote; markets priced in both a deal and a resumption of strikes; and both capitals used the election as a deadline, real or artificial, to force movement.

Trump's "No" on Monday loosened that deadline, at least rhetorically. But a single word from a president on the eve of an election is not a policy, and Tehran's own statements suggest it is not treating it as one. The Iranian official's warning that Iran would respond forcefully, "in the region and beyond," to US strikes reads as a message aimed past the election: whatever happens at the ballot box, Tehran is telling Washington, the cost of escalation has not gone down.

There is also a regional clock running alongside the American one. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday that talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia were continuing, aimed at new regional security arrangements for countries in the region without foreign military involvement. China's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said special envoy Zhai Jun planned to visit Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia in early and mid-November. The war is no longer a two-sided negotiation; it is a regional rearrangement being negotiated in parallel, in several capitals at once, and any US-Iran deal will have to fit inside whatever Riyadh, Doha, Beijing and the Gulf states are building around it.

What the oil market is really saying

It is tempting to read oil prices as a verdict on the talks. Monday's 7.6 percent plunge looked like a vote for peace; Tuesday's rebound looked like a vote for war. The truth is more useful and less dramatic: the market is pricing a stalemate with a risk premium attached.

TD Securities commodity strategist Ryan McKay put it plainly, saying his firm did "not anticipate a complete erosion of the risk premium via diplomacy headlines alone," given continued tanker and Houthi attacks. KCM Trade's Tim Waterer said the Qeshm report "added a degree of risk premium back into the oil price." Both comments point to the same logic: traders will not price the war away until ships move through Hormuz normally again, and ships will not move normally until a deal is signed and holds.

That creates a feedback loop worth watching. Every strike report lifts prices, which raises inflation pressure in oil-importing economies, which increases political pressure for a deal — but also raises the value of the strait as leverage, which makes both sides less willing to surrender it cheaply. The oil price is not just measuring the war; in a small way, it is part of the war's economics.

Three things this deadlock reveals

First, the negotiation has moved from "whether" to "in what order," and that is a harder problem than it sounds. Early-stage talks argue about goals. Late-stage talks argue about sequencing, verification and who bears the risk of moving first — and those are the arguments that most often kill deals, because they force each side to admit how little it trusts the other. The public statements this week are, in effect, both sides admitting exactly that.

Second, Qatar's role has changed. Doha is no longer just passing messages; it is shuttling drafts, hosting the back-and-forth in real time, and publicly defending the value of continuing even when one side says a deal is far off. That is the behaviour of a mediator that believes the alternative — a return to major fighting after the midterms — is bad enough to justify absorbing public pessimism from both capitals. Mediators do not usually say "we cannot lose hope" unless they are worried that hope is precisely what is running out.

Third, the war is increasingly being fought through incidents rather than campaigns. A strike on Qeshm described as "defensive." Tankers hitting mines in lanes they were not supposed to be in. Drones claimed downed over a coastal town. None of these, on its own, restarts the full-scale war of February. Together, they keep the conflict warm enough that neither side can claim it is over, and cool enough that neither side has to admit it has resumed. That grey zone is dangerous precisely because it is stable: it can continue for months, and any single incident inside it can be misread as something bigger.

What to watch next

Five things will tell us whether this deadlock breaks or hardens. One, whether the Qatari draft produces a second round of in-person talks this week, and whether either side publicly accepts any part of the other's sequence. Two, whether the United States carries out further strikes after the midterm results are known — or pointedly does not. Three, whether shipping through Hormuz stabilises or suffers another mine or missile incident, and whether insurers and shipowners, rather than governments, start to decide the strait's fate by refusing to sail. Four, what China's envoy, Zhai Jun, hears in Tehran, Muscat and Riyadh in the coming days, since Beijing is the largest buyer of the oil that moves through the strait. Five, whether the Iran-Saudi security talks Araghchi described produce anything concrete — because a regional arrangement that excludes foreign military involvement, if it ever materialised, would change the strategic logic of the entire war.

Frequently asked questions

Is the US-Iran war over?

No. A senior Iranian official told Reuters on 3 November that the two sides remain far from a deal to end the war, despite eight days of talks over a draft agreement. Fighting has not stopped: the US struck targets on Qeshm Island overnight, and tankers were reported to have hit mines in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

What is the Strait of Hormuz, and why does it matter?

It is the narrow waterway between Iran and the Musandam Peninsula, about 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. Before the war, roughly a fifth of the world's crude oil and natural gas supplies passed through it, making it one of the most important energy chokepoints on earth. Disruption there raises global oil prices and shipping insurance costs almost immediately.

What does Iran want from a deal?

According to Iranian officials, Tehran wants an end to the US naval blockade, sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets — and says its conditions must be met before Hormuz reopens. Nuclear talks, in Tehran's stated sequence, can only begin after those conditions are fulfilled.

What does the United States want?

Washington has not published its full terms, but the shape of its position is clear from the talks: a durable end to attacks on shipping, the reopening of Hormuz, and constraints on Iran's nuclear programme. President Trump said on Monday that he believed Tehran wanted a deal soon, and answered "No" when asked whether he was considering strikes after the midterms.

Who is mediating, and why Qatar?

Qatar is the lead mediator, with Pakistan also playing an active role, according to Iran's foreign minister. Doha has hosted and shuttled talks for years, maintains channels to both Washington and Tehran, and has a direct interest in Gulf stability as a major liquefied natural gas exporter. Its foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that both sides remained committed to mediation and were reviewing mediators' proposals.

Could the war escalate again after the US midterms?

That is the fear mediators have been working against. The conflict has repeatedly been linked to a possible resumption of major strikes after the elections, and both sides have warned the other this week. Nothing in Tuesday's statements rules escalation out — but neither side has announced a resumption of full-scale fighting, and mediation is continuing.

The bottom line

The honest summary of Tuesday is not that peace failed or that war resumed. It is that both sides are still negotiating over the price of trust, and neither has yet agreed to pay it first. Iran says its conditions must be met before Hormuz reopens. The United States says it wants a deal but has not publicly accepted that sequence. Qatar says keep talking. The oil market says the risk is still priced in.

Wars that end in negotiated settlements usually end this way — not with a breakthrough announcement, but with a long, public argument about order, verification and guarantees, followed, sometimes suddenly, by an agreement that makes the argument look obsolete. Whether this one follows that pattern depends on the next few days: on what happens after the midterm votes are counted, on whether the Qatari draft survives contact with both capitals, and on whether the incidents in the strait stay incidents rather than becoming a cause. Until then, "far off" is not just Tehran's description. It is the most accurate available summary of where things stand.

For more in-depth explainers on world events, markets and technology, visit abdulrahimmughal.com.

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