The United States would hit Iran “VERY HARD,” President Donald Trump posted Thursday on Truth Social, while threatening to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main crude export hub. Hours later, Trump cancelled every planned strike, citing discussions approved at the “highest level” of Iranian leadership. No confirmation came from Tehran.
The day before, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 953 points after Trump’s escalating language pushed West Texas Intermediate crude up more than 2% to $90.03 a barrel. Within hours of the cancellation, oil prices eased and US stock futures recovered. The pattern matched dozens of similar swings earlier in the spring.
Donald Trump launched major combat operations against Iran in late February, alongside Israeli strikes. Iran retaliated, and after a two-week ceasefire, initial talks in Islamabad failed to produce a peace deal. Vice-President JD Vance led that US delegation, which marked the highest-level American-Iranian meeting since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. An open-ended ceasefire kept the fighting paused without settling anything.
Thirty-Seven Claims, Zero Deals
A review of Trump’s social media posts and public remarks found that Trump proclaimed at least 37 times that an Iran deal was near. Each claim jolted markets. None produced a signed document.
In late March, Trump posted before dawn that talks were going “very good.” The Dow jumped 1,200 points on that sentiment. Within hours, Iran denied any contact with Washington, and markets reversed.
The cycle persisted through dozens of news cycles into late May, with stocks and oil moving on the headlines even as no agreement appeared.
Iranian academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi, closely linked to the Tehran government, wrote on X that Trump timed announcements to market openings. “Every week, when markets open, Trump makes these kinds of statements to drive down oil prices,” Marandi wrote. “Even his five-day deadline aligns with the closure of the energy market.”
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf told American investors that pre-market White House announcements were “often just a setup for profit-taking.”
Washington has not confirmed that reading. The consistency of the pattern puts oil prices and the domestic political cost of petrol at the heart of each announcement’s design. Unleaded petrol crossed $4 a gallon nationwide by mid-April, making the energy price line central to the administration’s visible political math.
Europe Enters Through the Side Door
Donald Trump announced that a deal could be signed in Europe this weekend, with Vice-President JD Vance attending the signing. Negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would accompany Vance, according to reports from the Oval Office.
Europe’s centrality surprised many who had watched the continent’s initial exclusion from the conflict. The Twelve-Day War of last year caught European governments off guard, coming roughly 24 hours after the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom had met their Iranian counterpart in Geneva.
European capitals then pursued what researchers described as a “double track” strategy, combining pressure through European Union mechanisms with direct bilateral energy deals and calls for mediation and de-escalation.
This patient dual positioning now pays a structural dividend, with Europe offering the only venue that combines enough neutrality and institutional weight for a credible signing ceremony.
Vance’s Pivot and the Paradox It Carries
Europe’s selection as the signing venue carries implications beyond geography, given that JD Vance had served as the Trump administration’s most vocal critic of European governance.
Vance had largely become the Trump team’s chief antagonist of Europe, both publicly and behind the scenes, criticising defence spending and censorship, and telling Fox News last year that Europe risked “civilizational suicide.” Vance’s advisers also believed Israeli officials had worked to undermine Vance’s standing for being insufficiently hawkish on Iran.
Meanwhile, Iran’s negotiating team saw Vance as an attractive partner, based on Vance’s well-documented opposition to overseas military entanglements.
Vance’s scepticism of foreign intervention gave Tehran reason to see a negotiated path as potentially viable, even with wide gaps on terms. A signing in Europe, if it happens, would cement Vance’s role as the administration’s central diplomatic operator, reinforcing a prospective 2028 presidential profile.
The Calculus Behind the Cycle
Thursday’s events point to the core rationale driving American Iran policy. Donald Trump’s swings track a statecraft calibrated primarily to oil prices, domestic market sentiment, and pump prices.
Tehran’s retaliatory attacks on Gulf states and trading uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz remain the commodity market’s focus, with observers noting that markets have absorbed the shock better than worst-case scenarios thanks to high inventories and rerouted trade.
That audience-driven logic has nonetheless produced real structural outcomes. Europe, sidelined when the conflict began, now provides the proposed setting for its resolution. JD Vance, once positioned as Europe’s chief antagonist, travels to European soil as Washington’s peace envoy.
Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps denied approving any text for an initial memorandum of understanding with the United States, leaving the conflict’s central variable unresolved even as Trump’s announcement moved markets.
Whether any agreement reached under such conditions holds long enough to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stabilise global energy supply remains to be seen.
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