Yesterday Trump said inter alia that Hormuz was open and that Iran had agreed never to close Hormuz again; that Iran, with the help of the U.S., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines, and that U.S. and Iran would work together to extract Iran’s highly enriched uranium (HEU). Trump wrote: “We’re going to get ⁠it together. We’re going to go in with Iran, at a nice leisurely pace, and go down and start excavating with big machinery … We’ll bring it back to the United States very soon”.

The President said earlier on Friday that Iran had agreed to hand over Iran’s HEU stockpile. None of these claims were true. Either Trump was confabulating (holding to fantasies, albeit believing them to be true); or he was manipulating markets.

If the latter – it was a success. Oil fell and markets soared. Reportedly, 20 minutes before the claim that the Strait of Hormuz was open and would never close again, a $760 million short on oil was placed… Someone ‘made a pile’.

All this turbulence created much confusion. Trump also said a new round of talks and an likely agreement with Iran would happen very soon — even during this weekend. The likelihood of talks is false.

Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reports that “the American side has been informed via the Pakistani mediator that we [Iran] do not agree to a second round [of talks]”. From the beginning of the mooted Pakistani-mediated ceasefire, Iran was supposed to allow the daily passage of a limited number of ships. However, this was always subject to Iranian conditions for transit passage.

The net result of Trump’s manipulations has been to make Iran re-assert its existing conditions on Hormuz, on its stocks of HEU, and on its ‘right to enrich’ in tighter, less flexible definition. The Islamabad talks had already showed Iran that its 10-point framework — initially affirmed by Trump to form a “workable basis” for beginning of direct negotiations with Iran — was no such thing. The Iranian framework was brushed aside towards the end of the day, as the U.S. pivoted to its key touchstones for its intended victory roll: Iran abandoning uranium enrichment in perpetuity; relinquishing to the U.S. its stock of 430kg of 60% enriched uranium, and the opening of Hormuz — free of tolls.

In short, the U.S. position was simply a continuation of Israel’s long-established demands. This added experience of Friday’s U.S. deceit will only have served to confirm Iran’s conviction to be continually on their guard and to view the contrived confusion as a possible U.S. diversion from planned military escalation. Iran, in refusing these key demands, triggered the U.S.’ sudden, end of day, pulling of the plug on Islamabad, and thus pointed up the pivotal context behind the U.S.

‘walk out’: Netanyahu was frustrated. Very frustrated. “As [Netanyahu] tells it, ‘the media’, that convenient all-purpose ‘villain’, has managed to cement the narrative that Israel lost the [Iran] war”, Ravit Hecht has written in Haaretz: “Not many people understand the power of short, sharp and unequivocal messaging – better than Netanyahu … With time running short and his international standing eroding – Netanyahu is desperate to deliver at least one unequivocal success story from the ambitious goals he proclaimed in the first week of the war – when hubris and adrenaline still seeped into every government briefing”.

“Regime change in Tehran? No longer on the table. The vague goal of “creating conditions” for such a change has evaporated.

Ending Iran’s ballistic missile program now seems wildly unrealistic; Netanyahu’s ministers acknowledge that as well. As for Iran’s network of regional proxies, its influence may become subtler, but few believe it can be dismantled altogether”. “That leaves one card still in play: uranium”.

“Netanyahu’s circle hopes that, as in past crises, mounting pressure might compel Iran to export its enriched uranium stockpile. Netanyahu is staking everything on that outcome – or, on the possibility that renewed war could still destabilise the regime”. This is why Vice-President Vance — who was almost hourly taking instruction from the White House or Tel Aviv— wound up the talks prematurely.

A short sharp victory messaging on which Netanyahu’s future depends clearly was not about to emerge from the talks. U.S. Constitutional U.S. lawyer, Robert Barnes (who is a friend of Vance), reports in an interview that: “Trump began exhibiting signs of early dementia in September 2025 … He frequently confabulates, he routinely loses his temper and unleashes screaming rants and he is incapable of doing critical thi