On a Monday afternoon at the White House, Donald Trump told reporters something his counterparts in Tehran flatly denied: that the United States and Iran were negotiating at that very moment. "We are talking right now," he said, describing the exchanges as a final opportunity before what he called "decapitation" — a word that left little ambiguity about the stakes he was signalling. The gap between his account and Tehran's is not merely a matter of diplomatic face-saving; it reflects a deeper confusion at the heart of a war that has already lasted more than five months without a resolution. The conflict began on 28 February, when the United States and Israel launched surprise strikes against Iran.

Since then, a familiar cycle has taken hold: rounds of on-and-off diplomacy have produced periods of relative calm, only to be broken by fresh threats. Last week, Trump had warned of strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure; by Saturday, he was describing the outline of a potential deal. Iran, for its part, insists that its only current talks are with Oman, focused specifically on securing passage through the Strait of Hormuz — the critical oil corridor through which roughly a fifth of the world's traded oil normally flows. Iran reimposed a blockade of the waterway after a ceasefire collapsed, firing on commercial vessels attempting to pass.

Trump argued that Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar among them — had asked him to keep the diplomatic channel open. He also pointed to an American counter-blockade of Iranian ports, warning that nothing would reach Iran without US consent. Yet Iran retains both its missile and drone capabilities and its stockpiles of enriched uranium, which means that neither side has achieved a decisive advantage.