President Donald Trump met with Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani at the White House on Monday as diplomatic efforts to end the war with Iran continued. The meeting came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio cautioned that negotiations remained far from a breakthrough, while Tehran said it was willing to negotiate without submitting to pressure.
The conflicting signals emerged as the Strait of Hormuz continued to disrupt the global economy and regional governments pressed for a diplomatic solution to a conflict that has exposed Gulf nations to thousands of Iranian missile and drone attacks.
Speaking with reporters Sunday before leaving for a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris, Rubio said negotiations had made little headway and dismissed the conditions proposed by Tehran.
“I wouldn’t say we’re on the verge of a breakthrough,” Rubio said.
Cargo is loaded at the Port of Fujairah as the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran restricts maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, May 6, 2026. (Amr Alfiky/Reuters)
Rubio said Trump preferred a diplomatic settlement but characterized Iran’s demands as unrealistic.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday that Tehran was ready to negotiate an end to what he called a prolonged state of neither war nor peace.
“We can negotiate with dignity and resolve the issue with dignity. We favor dialogue and negotiations,” Pezeshkian said, according to Anadolu Agency on November 9, which cited a statement from the Iranian presidency.
He said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had directed officials to end the uncertainty but maintained that Iran would not capitulate to coercion.
Trump, meanwhile, indicated Sunday that he was not looking to escalate the conflict further. In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” the president said he saw no reason to intensify the war with Iran while insisting that the Strait of Hormuz remained open.
Mediators have been considering a two-day proposal under which the United States would lift its naval blockade and release some frozen Iranian funds. Tehran would then move toward renewed nuclear inspections and reopen the Strait of Hormuz before broader talks resumed, according to Axios on November 9.
Washington has not accepted the proposal, and major disagreements remain over the terms of any potential agreement.
A satellite image shows the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial maritime passage linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and a vital route for global energy supplies. (Amanda Macias/News Media)
Hormuz remains open to shipping—but at what price?
The consequences of the diplomatic deadlock are most apparent in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Before the war, the equivalent of about one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and more than one-fifth of worldwide liquefied natural gas trade moved through the passage, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That made it one of the most strategically important shipping routes on Earth.
Since the conflict began, Iranian attacks, shipping limits and U.S. military operations have severely disrupted commercial traffic.
Commercial vessels have continued to come under attack despite the presence of American naval forces.
Reuters reported Monday that attacks on tankers in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz rose sharply in October and continued into November. Iranian authorities also said a tanker struck a mine east of the strait on Sunday.
Speaking with News Media at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi, Amos Hochstein, a former senior adviser to President Joe Biden and now managing partner at TWG Global, disputed claims that the waterway had effectively reopened.
A view of the Port of Fujairah as the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran restricts maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, May 6, 2026. (REUTERS)
“There has been a hot conflict in the Strait of Hormuz on almost a nightly basis. Tankers are getting fired on, tankers are getting hit,” Hochstein said.
“If you need a heavy U.S. military presence just to let an oil tanker go through, to me that’s the definition of not open,” he told News Media.
Hochstein said the exceptional security measures needed to protect commercial ships show that normal navigation has not returned.
Higher insurance costs, the risk of further attacks and limits on maritime traffic have continued to weigh on the global economy.
His view differs from the more positive assessment offered by U.S. Central Command. In late October, Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of CENTCOM, said U.S. forces had cleared major shipping routes of Iranian mines and helped thousands of commercial vessels pass through the waterway.
According to a CENTCOM statement reported October 25, more than 3,000 commercial vessels had crossed the Strait of Hormuz with U.S. military support during the previous six months.
For Hochstein, however, the fact that military forces can escort ships does not mean the commercial dangers have gone away.
He said negotiations could be divided into separate tracks, with Washington focusing on Iran’s nuclear program while Gulf states take a larger role in talks about freedom of navigation and maritime security.
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“Maybe the Gulf allies themselves should be the ones that are managing that part of the negotiation on the [strait] while the United States would manage the negotiations … on the nuclear front,” Hochstein told News Media.
Dr. Angela Wilkinson, CEO of the World Energy Council, said the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz had highlighted the need to reconsider global energy markets, which have traditionally emphasized efficiency over resilience.
“Efficiency is not enough. We have to have resilience,” Wilkinson told News Media at ADIPEC.
“What we at the World Energy Council recommend is that we rebalance energy,” she said, calling for strategies that address energy security, affordability and sustainability together.
“We have escalating logistics costs, but we’ve got new vulnerabilities of interdependency. And that’s what we’re navigating our way through.”
Dr. Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, chairman of the UAE Federal National Council’s Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs Committee, speaks with News Media in Abu Dhabi about the Iranian threat, regional security and the prospects for diplomacy. (Efrat Lachter/News Media)
UAE says oil exports have increased despite the conflict
For the UAE, the disruption has intensified efforts to reduce its reliance on the Strait of Hormuz.
The Emirates has invested in alternative routes, including a pipeline to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman outside the strait. The system enables some oil exports to bypass the contested shipping lane.
Al Nuaimi said the country had significantly increased its oil exports since the war began.
“We want the Strait of Hormuz to be open, to be respected according to international law, but we don’t wait and make our country and our people hostages to others. … Before the war started on February 28th, we used to export 3.1, 3.2 million barrels a day. Now we are exporting almost 4.4.”
UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei also said at ADIPEC on November 2 that the country’s exports had at times surpassed prewar levels.
The UAE is also developing new export routes, overseas storage facilities and shipping infrastructure to improve its ability to withstand future disruptions.
Hochstein praised the UAE and Saudi Arabia for recognizing the risks of relying on a single maritime route.
“You can create alternative pathways and infrastructure, but those are redundancies,” he said.
Attendees gather at ADIPEC 2026, one of the world’s largest energy conferences, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 2–5, 2026, as industry leaders discuss global energy security, technological innovation and the expanding role of artificial intelligence. (Efrat Lachter/News Media)
Those measures can limit the economic damage caused by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, Hochstein said, but they cannot fully replace the waterway.
The broader effects have spread across international energy markets, as higher shipping costs and supply interruptions affect consumers well beyond the Middle East.
In a separate exclusive interview with News Media, Mohammed Baharoon, director general of the Emirati research center B’huth, said the confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz represented a separate economic conflict with consequences far outside the region.
“The third war was Iran’s war on global economy by blocking the Strait of Hormuz,” Baharoon said. “And they’ve affected people in the Philippines, in India, in Brazil that has nothing to do with this conflict.”
He said the disruption had revealed the vulnerability of nations dependent on a single shipping corridor and underscored the need for alternative pipelines, transportation systems and supply chains.
“And part of resilience is that you will not have only one outlet,” he said.
Baharoon said those investments were not merely emergency measures prompted by the war, but part of a broader, long-term effort to expand regional connectivity.
“The war might have accelerated the plans, but the plans have always been there,” he said.
Even if the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens, he said, the region will continue to need additional routes for international trade.
Vessels pass through the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on Aug. 10, 2026. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
“We need more access, we’ll need more supply chains. And we need them to be not only durable, resilient, but also redundant.”
News Media contacted the White House for comment but had not received a response before publication.