Brent crude jumped to $97 a barrel Thursday morning, and stocks slid. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, was posting on Truth Social with language that didn’t leave much to the imagination about what happens if Iran walks away from what he’s calling “the REAL AGREEMENT reached.”
That post hit at one of the more unstable moments of a ceasefire that’s been wobbling since it started.
The two-week pause was brokered partly through Pakistani intermediaries, and it was supposed to bring some breathing room to a region that’s seen none. It didn’t hold even through its first day without serious complications. On Wednesday, Israel kept up strikes in Lebanon, killing hundreds. Gulf Arab countries reported drone and missile attacks hitting oil refineries and power plants. Then came reports that Iran had shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow chokepoint that carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas through its waters.
The White House moved fast to knock that last one down. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the reports were flatly false, pointing to what she described as an uptick in vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. “The reports are wrong,” she said.
Markets didn’t wait. Brent crude, the international benchmark for the energy market, climbed 2.4% to hit $97 a barrel. Stocks gave back Wednesday’s gains. That’s not what ceasefire optimism looks like.
Trump’s Truth Social post was blunt. He laid out two things he says Iran agreed to: no nuclear enrichment, and the strait stays open. “It was agreed, a long time ago, and despite all of the fake rhetoric to the contrary,” he wrote. Then came the warning. “If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the ‘Shootin’ Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before,” he wrote.
Iran’s reading of the deal looks nothing like that.
Tehran has been circulating a 10-point plan that includes full Iranian control over the strait, the removal of U.S. sanctions, and an explicit right to enrichment. That’s not a narrow gap. That’s two sides describing completely different agreements. It gets stranger from there. Leavitt said Trump had “literally thrown in the garbage” Iran’s proposal, even though he’d previously called a plan from Tehran “workable.” That whiplash in tone has done real damage to whatever clarity existed about what was actually settled and when.
Still, talks are moving forward. High-level U.S. and Iranian delegations are set to meet Saturday in Islamabad. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose government brokered the ceasefire itself, is serving as mediator again. His team acted as a go-between for Washington and Tehran during the initial talks. The White House confirmed Vice President JD Vance will lead the American side into those negotiations.
That’s a significant choice. Vance walks into Islamabad with both governments publicly insisting the ceasefire reflects their own terms. He’ll need to find common language between a president who says the deal is done and a government in Tehran that says it hasn’t agreed to the core elements Trump’s claiming as settled.
Trump’s post also stated that U.S. forces in the region would “remain in place” until a final deal is signed and, according to LAist, until its implementation gets confirmed.
Watch the energy markets. If Saturday’s Islamabad talks collapse or stall, Brent at $97 won’t be the ceiling.