The Trump administration this week sparked enthusiasm that the U.S. and Iran could soon strike a deal on the Strait of Hormuz, driving down oil prices and sending stocks soaring — only for no deal to emerge.
If that sounds familiar, it may be because President Donald Trump has claimed dozens of times that the U.S. is close to an agreement that will end the war it began more than five months ago.
Investors have reacted to many of those claims with bursts of buying on hopes a breakthrough is near, even as the war instead appears to be widening and progress on Trump’s chief stated goal — containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions — is at a standstill.
“There’s tremendous optimism bias in the market,” Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told CNBC.
Markets continue to assume incentives for both the U.S. and Iran favor a diplomatic end to the war. But some investors seem to “see a deal as a time machine” that will reset the Middle East to its prewar status quo, even though that’s unlikely to happen, Croft said.
The conflict of late centers on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway for the global oil trade that has became a source of major leverage for Iran.
Tehran’s ability to effectively close the strait — an open, untolled international waterway before the war started — triggered a global energy supply shock that drove up gas prices, exacerbated inflation and raised alarms about oil reserves.
“The President’s preference is always diplomacy, but he reserves all options to ensure that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNBC by email.
Even those who believe diplomacy remains a viable path to peace acknowledge the future of the strait presents an intractable problem.
“There still appears to be a fundamental difference over the fate of Hormuz: Iran wants to impose a service fee, while the US wants the pre-war situation restored, i.e., international, free waters in the Strait,” Claudio Galimberti, partner and chief economist at Rystad Energy, said by email.
Bessent, Trump teased imminent deal
The oil market is eager for any hint of progress toward reopening the strait. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent provided a major dose of optimism Tuesday morning when he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that a deal to ensure “freedom of movement” in the strait could come in a matter of hours.
“We are in talks with the Iranians,” Bessent said. “There is a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the strait and move towards a more normalized position in this conflict.”
Oil prices tumbled right after Bessent’s remarks, while stocks blasted higher and bold yields pulled back, as investors’ optimism coincided with an artificial intelligence-fueled tech rally.
Crude prices remain highly elevated from their prewar levels, however, as traders bounce between hope for a durable solution in the strait and bracing for a military escalation by the U.S.
The market “remains trapped in a spiky muddle-through dynamic,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, told CNBC in an email.
“While Iran and Oman may agree on a narrow Hormuz management plan, we do not see the broader and durable settlement between the US and Iran that Hormuz normalization requires and the crude markets want to see,” he said.
Bessent’s comments to CNBC nevertheless buoyed outlooks that were already brightening, in light of Trump’s Sunday evening announcement that he was aborting a large-scale attack on Iran because “the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”
That claim — which echoed myriad other times that Trump has threatened to decisively obliterate Iran, only to pull back — helped pump stocks on Monday, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged to a record close.
Trump added more fuel to the fire Tuesday night, when he said a deal to reopen the strait “could happen” as soon as Wednesday or Thursday because “a lot of progress has been made.”
Despite extending Bessent’s time frame for a possible deal, Trump’s comments continued to raise investors’ expectations on Wednesday, with the Dow hitting another record-high close and oil prices holding steady.
Iran pushes back on Trump
The galloping momentum in equities came in spite of Iran’s repeated insistence that it is not actively negotiating with the U.S.
Rather, Iran has said it’s in talks with Oman, another regional power that borders the Persian Gulf, to hash out their own agreement on shipping through the strait.
Trump has angrily asserted that U.S.-Iran talks are ongoing despite Iran’s “duplicitous” claims otherwise. He also continues to insist the U.S., which has reimposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Gulf region, is in full control of the strait. Vessel traffic, however, remains far below prewar averages, when 20% of the world’s oil would pass through the waterway.
On Thursday, any expectations of an imminent deal on the strait appeared to be at least temporarily dashed, after Iranian state media reported a draft plan that would block passage for U.S. and Israeli ships and impose other restrictions.
The Trump administration quickly appeared to dismiss that draft as a nonstarter.
“Any temporary routes will be without any impediments — meaning no approvals or permissions and no tolls or charges,” a U.S. official told CNBC when asked about the report. “The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway and no party controls the lanes or the ability to transit through them.”
When asked at the White House on Thursday afternoon if a deal to reopen the strait has been reached, Trump said: “I don’t want to say it has been. It’s sort of open right now.”
“I think we’re doing very well,” Trump added. “I’m involved in the negotiation. I think we’re doing fine. … It could be soon.”
Iran, which has kept up an aggressively defiant posture against the U.S. throughout the war, mocked Trump’s messaging.
″’Massive attack coming … wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.’ That’s theater diplomacy on loop,” Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote on X on Thursday afternoon.
“Using bullying + broken promises + fake news as leverage is a failed strategy,” Ghalibaf wrote.
‘Deeply entrenched optimism bias’
As the war drags into its sixth month and stockpiles of both oil and key munitions reportedly dwindle, analysts wonder how much longer markets will jump at the dangling hope of a deal.
“The cycle of headline-driven price pullbacks may lead to confidence that the economic cost of the conflict is containable,” but the shrinking U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve signals “waning global buffers,” RBC wrote in a July 28 strategy note.
Rapidan’s McNally warned oil prices could shoot back up to peak levels “if both sides are unable to contain military escalation or continued inventory de-stocking dissipates the market’s deeply entrenched optimism bias and calls on prices to curtail consumption.”
Galimberti, of Rystad, told CNBC, “My hunch is that if they want to avoid a costly stalemate, with oil prices quickly escalating back to April levels or above and little to no Iranian flows, they will need to start bridging the differences and move their respective red lines towards the center.”
