President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States had agreed to continue negotiations with Iran, even as he declared the ceasefire between the two countries over. The statement, posted on his Truth Social platform, came at the end of a week of renewed military exchanges: three commercial tankers linked to Qatar and Saudi Arabia were struck near the Strait of Hormuz, prompting US strikes on Iranian military sites and retaliatory Iranian attacks on American bases in Gulf states. No further incidents were reported on Friday, as regional mediators intensified efforts to salvage a diplomatic framework that had been in place since late June.

According to senior US officials, Washington is now demanding that Iran issue a public statement acknowledging that all channels of the Strait of Hormuz are open and that attacks on commercial shipping will cease. The officials indicated that Iran had been given until Saturday to comply, warning of severe consequences otherwise. Trump separately threatened to “completely decimate” Iran if it attempted to assassinate him, citing intelligence shared by Israel about an alleged Iranian plot. The US Treasury also revoked a temporary waiver that had allowed limited Iranian oil sales, a move that Tehran says violates the memorandum of understanding signed weeks earlier.

Iran’s foreign ministry rejected Trump’s characterisation of the diplomatic contacts, stating that Tehran had not requested direct talks but had agreed to receive a Qatari mediation delegation. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who arrived in Oman on Saturday for discussions on maritime security, accused Washington of violating the ceasefire agreement by cancelling the oil waiver and insisted that “there can only be mutual compliance.” Iranian state media reported that Qatari negotiators met officials in Tehran on Friday to de-escalate tensions and discuss the strait. Tehran maintains that it must control the waterway, which it effectively closed after the war began in February, and has expressed a desire to charge transit fees—a position that, under international law, is not generally permitted for coastal states.

The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies passed before the conflict, remains the focal point of the crisis. Renewed fighting has driven crude prices to their largest weekly gain in eight weeks, a politically sensitive development for the Trump administration ahead of November’s congressional elections. With Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, yet to appear in public after reportedly being injured in the same strike that killed his predecessor, the internal political situation in Tehran remains opaque. A new round of US-Iran negotiations is expected to take place next week, likely in Switzerland, while Qatari and Omani mediation continues.