Oil prices rise as faltering US-Iran talks keep war risks high
Oil prices gained Friday as faltering efforts to end the Iran war and US threats to increase economic pressure on Tehran kept geopolitical risks elevated, Reuters reported.
Brent crude rose 0.7% to $87.68 a barrel, while US crude gained 0.3% to $81.49.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said Thursday the United States could maintain its naval blockade on Iran “indefinitely” by rotating ships in and out.
Oil and gas prices were also on track for sizeable weekly gains amid the prospect of an extended blockade, according to the report.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Thursday in an interview with Fox News that Iran’s ability to disrupt shipping around the Strait of Hormuz was declining as the US capacity to escort vessels and move products out of the region was growing.
Iranian children play football on the shores of the Strait of Hormuz as cargo vessels pass in the background, August 5, 2026
With a deadline to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz only days away, parts of Iran’s media are increasingly treating any easing of tensions not as a return to normality but as a brief window to replenish essential supplies before the confrontation potentially resumes.
The debate comes amid speculation that the 60-day arrangement agreed with the United States could be extended by another 30 to 60 days, while Oman continues efforts to broker a temporary reopening of the waterway.
An ILNA report published less than a week before the deadline cited diplomatic sources as saying the atmosphere surrounding the talks had become more positive, though no final agreement had been reached.
The proposed arrangement would not constitute a broader political settlement, but a temporary de-escalation mechanism allowing commercial shipping to resume under monitored conditions.
One source described it as a “technical and security understanding,” with shipping lanes potentially restored in phases.
A ‘golden opportunity’
The possibility of even a temporary reopening has prompted debate in Tehran over how Iran should use what some commentators describe as a “60-day golden opportunity.”
Writing in the moderate Etemad newspaper, Hossein Salahvarzi argued that any easing of tensions would provide a narrow but valuable chance to stabilize trade after months of disruption.
Political de-escalation alone, he warned, would not restore normal commerce. Ships must be willing to enter the region, insurers must accept the risks, freight rates must fall and ports must be able to handle incoming cargo.
Salahvarzi urged authorities to prioritize imports of medicine, grain, livestock feed, critical spare parts and industrial inputs, warning that without clear planning, essential goods could remain stuck in bureaucratic queues until the window closes.
The argument reflects a wider sense of urgency in Iranian coverage, with any reopening increasingly portrayed as a temporary opportunity rather than the beginning of a durable return to normal trade.
ILNA similarly noted that even a short period of stability could reduce freight and insurance costs and ease pressure on essential imports.
Hardliners resist reopening
But the prospect of reopening Hormuz continues to face strong political resistance in Tehran.
Hardline lawmakers on Thursday dismissed the chances of arrangements negotiated with Omani and Pakistani intermediaries succeeding and insisted that the strait should remain closed.
Foreign Ministry officials have also publicly expressed doubts over whether the mediation will produce an agreement.
The competing positions expose a broader disagreement over how Iran should use its remaining leverage over Hormuz: whether to exploit a temporary opening to relieve pressure on its economy or preserve restrictions on shipping as a bargaining tool in negotiations with Washington.
ILNA said Oman had been mediating intensively on a temporary arrangement, while Persian Gulf Arab states, China and Pakistan were also pushing for de-escalation because of the disruption to regional trade.
“No country in the region benefits from a closed Hormuz,” the agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
Any agreement would nevertheless remain conditional and reversible, with deep mistrust between Tehran and Washington leaving it vulnerable to another military incident.
For those urging Tehran to seize the opportunity, that uncertainty is precisely the point. A temporary reopening would offer Iran a chance to replenish essential supplies and ease pressure on trade, but with little confidence that calmer conditions in the Persian Gulf will last.
A headline strap on Iranian state TV on August 14 announces an agreement between the ministries of health and "khavarejeh," Kharijite affairs, instead of "kharejeh," foreign affairs. The difference is one letter.
One extra letter on Iranian state TV turned Abbas Araghchi into the minister of the Kharijites, the sect that abandoned Shia Islam's first imam and killed him, prompting some Iranians to read it as the broadcaster's latest shot at the man negotiating with Washington.
The setting was routine government business: a signing ceremony between two ministries, with footage showing Araghchi alongside Health Minister Mohammad-Reza Zafarghandi. The headline strap announced an agreement between the ministries of health and, in Persian, khavarejeh, Kharijite affairs, instead of kharejeh, foreign affairs. The difference is a single letter vav. A screenshot was circulating within minutes.
Within hours, the strap was a national argument. "Abbas isn't the foreign minister anymore. He's the minister of the Kharijites now," one widely shared post said of the man leading Iran's talks with Washington.
Another user drew the lineage: "Zarif was America's foreign minister. This one turned out to be the Kharijites'." Mohammad Javad Zarif, the architect of the 2015 nuclear deal, spent years being mocked with that title by the broadcaster's favorite guests; to many, the strap was the same insult upgraded, from serving the enemy to heresy.
The reformist daily Etemad asked the question on everyone's screen: "Mistake or mischief?" One viral post refused the innocent reading outright: "With this budget, this many staff, editors, broadcast supervisors and layer after layer of managers, you don't get to say 'it was a typo.'" The post tagged Peyman Jebelli, the broadcaster's hardline chief.
The name Kharijites means "those who went out," and the story behind it is Islam's first civil war, remembered as the First Fitna. In 657 AD, at the Battle of Siffin, followers of Imam Ali, the first imam of Shia Islam, pressed him to accept arbitration with his rival Muawiya rather than fight on. When the arbitration went badly, the same men turned on Ali for accepting it, declared that "judgment belongs to God alone," walked out of his camp and made war on him. Ali crushed them at Nahrawan; three years later, a Kharijite assassin's poisoned blade killed him at prayer.
In the Islamic Republic's political language, no insult reaches deeper. "Kharijite" means the traitor within, the pious-faced insider who deserts the rightful leader, the author of fitna, the sedition that splits the faithful.
The late supreme leader Ali Khamenei's own commemorations dwelt on Nahrawan as the hardest of Ali's wars, fought against old companions whose foreheads were calloused from prayer, and his loyalists spent the years after the 2009 protests hanging the word on the opposition.
One user reached for exactly that memory this week, asking a government supporter: "So does your definition cover 2005 and 2009 as well?"
The alibi written into the alphabet
The typo has a linguistically respectable defense, which is part of what makes the episode so perfectly Iranian. Persian preserves a silent vav in a handful of ancient words, a fossil of pronunciation lost a thousand years ago: "sister" is written khvahar but said khahar. A typist's hand trained on those spellings could, in theory, plant the ghost letter in kharejeh on autopilot.
The defenders made that case. "It's a typo, not sabotage. Stop making a mountain out of a molehill," one wrote. Another blamed simple ignorance, at the establishment's expense: "Pure illiteracy at the mullahs' broadcaster. They figured if 'sister' takes the silent vav, 'foreign' must take one too."
The skeptics' answer was the broadcaster's record, which is where the story stops being about spelling.
A seminar, then a knife fight
What happened next may be the most Iranian part of all: the country fell into a theological flame war over the year 657, conducted in quote-tweets, as a proxy for a live question of war and peace.
One camp insisted the label fits the diplomats. "The Kharijites were the negotiation camp. That's the historical record," one post read. Another cast Araghchi in an even older role: "He's standing right where Amr ibn al-As stood, and his caliph is Muawiya," a reference to the silver-tongued arbitrator who outfoxed Ali's side at the table.
The rival camp threw the word back across the aisle. "The Kharijites were the ones pushing the imam into talks with the devil, and when it all went wrong, they blamed the imam," one wrote, a reading with a sharp contemporary edge, since hardline media have spent recent weeks portraying Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei as having opposed the negotiating process that produced the Islamabad agreement.
Another user completed the thought: "The Kharijites were inside Ali's own government. They kept pressuring him to negotiate, and when the whole thing blew up, they said: we had nothing to do with it."
Others turned the word on the broadcaster's own patrons: "If anyone here fits the Kharijites, it's Jalili and his gang. Extremism is all they've got." A government supporter fired back: "If only you people read some history. The Kharijites were the ones with no seat at the table, endlessly kicking at the government of the day to get one. Exactly like you."
And beneath the seminar, a threat. One account declared "the Kharijites' coup is near," amplifying a post that urged toppling President Masoud Pezeshkian's government before, it said, the government topples the system.
The broadcaster with a record
The reason so few Iranians extend the benefit of the doubt is that the strap did not appear on a neutral screen.
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is run by Jebelli and his cultural deputy Vahid Jalili, the brother of Saeed Jalili, the hardline politician who styles his circle a shadow government, and it has spent months in open warfare with the state's own diplomats.
In recent weeks alone, the broadcaster censored Pezeshkian's disclosure that the late supreme leader had privately ordered officials to negotiate with Washington while publicly ruling talks out; cut short a live interview with parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf; ignored a formal order from its own supervisory board to stop censoring senior officials; and answered a complaint from Araghchi with a sneer that it could not give him "24/7 coverage."
The timing gives the letter a forward edge. Jebelli's five-year term expires within weeks, and whether the new supreme leader reappoints the current management has become an early test of the postwar balance between the war camp and the talks camp.
A one-letter insult to the chief diplomat, aired on Jebelli's channels while his renewal hangs in the balance, is either spectacular carelessness or a message about who does not fear the outcome.
One establishment, two masks
A caution belongs here, and some Iranians supplied it themselves. The fight between the broadcaster and the diplomats is real enough to produce casualties, but the moderate-versus-hardliner frame is also the Islamic Republic's most exportable fiction; every actor in this drama supports the system, and the menace of one camp has always been useful to the bargaining of the other.
As one user put it: "It's an open division of labor. America and Israel attack from the outside, the Ahmadinejad crowd and the shadow government undermine from the inside."
A typo that cannot be proven deliberate is the perfect weapon for a factional war that cannot be proven real.
In Persian, the silent vav is written but never pronounced. On Iranian state television, it was the only letter that spoke.
A board displays gas prices amid the ongoing conflict with US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Washington D.C., U.S., March 15, 2026.
US Democrats appear to be sharpening their attacks on President Donald Trump over the economic fallout from the Iran war as rising fuel and household costs become an increasingly potent issue ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The growing criticism comes as the national average gasoline price has again climbed above $4 a gallon and Democrats show signs of eroding what has traditionally been a Republican advantage with voters on the economy. Gas prices have risen by more than 25% since the Iran war began in February.
Rep. Nikki Budzinski of Illinois pointed Thursday to the latest increase in gasoline prices, saying the national average had reached a record for this point in the year.
“The national gas average just hit a historic high for this time of year—more than $4 a gallon,” she wrote on X. “Families in Central Illinois are paying the price of the war in Iran every single time they pull up to the pump.”
Rep. Andrea Salinas of Oregon said American farmers spent $1.4 billion more on diesel during the spring planting season than a year earlier, blaming the increase on the conflict.
“With Trump’s ILLEGAL war pushing fuel prices higher and higher, growers are the ones paying the price,” she wrote.
The attacks come as polling suggests the economy is becoming an increasingly difficult issue for Trump and Republicans three months before the November 3 midterms.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this month found 37% of registered voters preferred Democrats’ approach to the economy, compared with 36% who favored Republicans—the first Democratic advantage on the issue in roughly a decade.
A separate Washington Post/Ipsos poll last month found the economy and high prices were the most commonly cited factors in voters’ midterm choices, mentioned by 54% of registered voters. Only 33% approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, against 65% who disapproved.
Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts sought to connect the war with Trump’s broader economic agenda, including tariffs and tax policy.
“Trump promised to lower prices on day one,” McGovern wrote. “Instead, his billionaires-first economic policies, stupid tariffs & illegal war with Iran are pushing prices to record highs.”
“His policy choices are making your life more expensive while the ultra rich do better than ever before,” he added.
Inflation eased slightly in July but remained above levels seen before the Iran war, while consumer prices have now risen faster than wages for four consecutive months.
Sen. Bernie Sanders sharpened the argument by contrasting federal spending on the war and tax cuts with the cost pressures facing households.
“$900 million for White House vanity projects? Approved. $1 trillion tax cut for the 1%? Approved. $1 trillion for war with Iran? Approved,” Sanders wrote.
“Lower grocery, housing or gas prices? Sorry, you're on your own. Money for billionaires. Money for war. Nothing for working people.”
The growing Democratic focus on gasoline, groceries and the Iran war suggests the party sees an opportunity to turn an issue that helped return Trump to the White House in 2024 against Republicans in November.
A vessel near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam
Iran is doubling down on control of the Strait of Hormuz, with some in Tehran now arguing the strategic leverage it provides is more valuable than a nuclear weapon.
Tehran’s drive to turn that control into lasting economic and political leverage—through shipping routes, mine clearance and potentially revenues from passing vessels—is emerging as a major obstacle to extending its fragile memorandum with the United States, which expires Sunday.
Washington, meanwhile, increasingly claims it has broken Iran’s control of Hormuz.
The June 18 memorandum is formally due to expire on August 16. President Donald Trump pronounced it over after Iran attacked three ships in the Strait of Hormuz, ordering more strikes and the resumption of the US maritime blockade.
Neither side, however, has formally abandoned diplomacy. If no extension is announced before Sunday, the current state of neither war nor peace could continue. An explicit declaration that the arrangement has ended could increase the risk of renewed attacks.
‘More valuable than a nuke’
Pressure against concessions over the strait is also growing inside Tehran.
Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission this week unanimously approved the broad outlines of legislation that would tighten Iran’s control over Hormuz.
The bill includes provisions for inspecting vessels in Iranian territorial waters, banning the passage of assets, equipment and vessels belonging to the United States, Israel and other countries Tehran deems hostile, and charging ships for maritime services.
If enacted, the legislation could constrain Tehran’s room for compromise, much as legislation passed during Hassan Rouhani’s presidency required his government to increase uranium enrichment and suspend implementation of the Additional Protocol unless banking and oil sanctions were lifted.
Alireza Salimi, a member of parliament’s presiding board, told the ISNA news agency Thursday that “the Strait of Hormuz is currently more valuable to Iran than an atomic bomb,” describing it as leverage for lifting sanctions and securing compensation for wartime losses.
Demands put talks in doubt
The tougher approach was also reflected in demands laid out shortly before his departure by Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the former secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
Zolghadr said reopening the strait would require an end to attacks on Iran and its allies, the lifting of the blockade, the withdrawal of US forces from around Iran, sanctions relief, the release of frozen Iranian assets and compensation for damage caused by the wars.
It remains unclear whether those demands represented his personal position or that of the SNSC, and whether his successor, Mohsen Rezaei, will pursue the same approach.
Rezaei’s appointment this week, along with other changes at the top of Iran’s security establishment, has been welcomed by hardline opponents of the government’s approach to negotiations.
Former diplomat Kourosh Ahmadi wrote in the Shargh newspaper that if Tehran insisted on the conditions outlined by Zolghadr, “it is highly unlikely that there will be any serious negotiations between Tehran and Washington at all.”
Both sides claim control
The dispute is unfolding as Tehran and Washington offer directly competing accounts of who actually controls Hormuz.
Trump said Wednesday that the United States had complete control of the waterway and that the maritime blockade had deprived Iran of the ability to act.
The spokesman for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the country’s wartime command center, rejected that assertion Thursday, saying the strait remained under Iranian control and that no vessel could pass safely without authorization from Iran’s armed forces.
Shipping-monitoring data show traffic remains a fraction of pre-war levels. Around 10 to 12 vessels have been crossing the strait daily in recent days, compared with roughly 130 to 140 before the war, with most currently using a route designated by Iran.
Tehran has also stressed that an agreement with Oman over shipping routes would not by itself be sufficient to reopen the strait.
Ali Gholhaki, a political activist close to parliament speaker and senior Islamabad negotiator Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, said Iranian decision-makers currently had no intention of reopening the waterway and had blocked an agreement with Oman because of what they viewed as Muscat’s alignment with Washington.
Tehran and Muscat at odds
The disagreement with Oman offers perhaps the clearest illustration of what Tehran now wants from its control of Hormuz.
Iran has pushed for control over shipping routes and mine clearance and for mandatory payments from vessels using the waterway. Oman has instead favored a joint fund supported by voluntary contributions from governments and companies benefiting from shipping.
Few in Tehran expect Muscat to accept Iran’s terms. Ahad Azadikhah, a lawmaker aligned with Ghalibaf, recently told Khabar Online that if Oman did so, the Islamic Republic would have achieved “the victory of all victories.”
The dispute means Hormuz is increasingly intertwined with the fate of the wider Tehran-Washington dialogue. As Iran seeks to turn control of the strait into leverage over sanctions, compensation and any broader settlement, Washington may increasingly see that same leverage as something that must be neutralized before a deal can be reached.
From left: Tara Farhangian, Yaser Azadeh and Homa Teymouri, and Mahmoud Ghanbari-Rad.
Iranian courts have handed down a new wave of prison terms and other punishments against protesters, activists and citizens accused of national security offenses, as the judicial crackdown that followed January’s nationwide protests continues months later.
At least six people were sentenced in five cases reported by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) on Wednesday and Thursday, with punishments ranging from eight months to 10 years in prison. One 21-year-old student was also sentenced to flogging and exile.
Rights groups have documented thousands of arrests since January and raised repeated concerns over denial of access to lawyers, torture and coerced confessions.
Iran Human Rights said in July that more than 70 January protesters were facing execution in Isfahan Central Prison alone, while HRANA reported in June that authorities in Zahedan had issued verdicts against 111 people detained during the protests.
Couple sentenced together
Homa Teymouri and her husband, Yaser Azadeh, who were arrested at their home during the January protests, have each been sentenced to five years in prison, HRANA reported, citing United Students.
Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court convicted Teymouri of “assembly and collusion against national security” and also imposed a two-year travel ban, a two-year prohibition on social media activity and confiscation of her phone. HRANA said Azadeh also received five years but did not specify the charges or court branch.
Teymouri holds a master’s degree in political thought from Tarbiat Modares University and Azadeh a master’s in Western philosophy from Shahid Beheshti University.
Student given prison, lashes and exile
Tara Farhangian, a 21-year-old physical education student arrested during the January protests, was sentenced in Qorveh to one year in prison, 31 lashes and two years of exile in Zabol, according to HRANA, citing Kolbar News.
A criminal court convicted her of “disrupting public peace and order” and “resisting officers,” while the Revolutionary Court separately fined her 120 million tomans for “propaganda against the regime” and “assembly and collusion to commit a crime against national security.”
Farhangian, who studies at Hamedan University, had previously been released on bail.
Ten years over ‘message to foreign media’
Leila Moallemi, a Mashhad resident held in Vakilabad Prison, has been sentenced to 10 years over information she allegedly provided to a media outlet outside Iran during the war, HRANA reported.
A source close to her family said the case concerned a voice message and information she sent to the outlet. HRANA said the precise charges and judicial branch remained unclear. Moallemi was arrested on May 28.
Her case comes amid heightened pressure on people accused of providing information to foreign media or governments during the conflict. HRANA documented 40 political and security-related executions between March 18 and June 3.
Two years for Tehran IT specialist
Mahmoud Ghanbari-Rad, a 40-year-old network security specialist held in Greater Tehran Prison, was sentenced to two years for “assembly and collusion against national security,” HRANA reported.
Ghanbari-Rad was arrested at his Tehran home in May and initially held in Evin Prison. HRANA said he was denied access to a lawyer during part of his detention.
In a call from prison, he rejected the case against him and said he had been pressured to accept the charges.
Sentenced over prison writings
Civil rights activist Mehdi Mahmoudian was sentenced in absentia to eight months for “propaganda against the regime,” based on writings he produced in prison that were subsequently published.
Mahmoudian, who has previously served time on the same charge, was arrested again on January 31 after signing a statement and released on bail the following month.
He faces a separate hearing before another branch of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on September 27.
