Trump claims ships carrying oil are moving out of strait of Hormuz after US and Iran agree deal

Trump claims ships carrying oil are moving out of strait of Hormuz after US and Iran agree deal

The Guardian-June 15th2026

Tom Ambrose (now); Yohannes Lowe, Fran Singh and Kate Lamb (earlier)

Trump, Vance and Iran’s parliament speaker signed the MoU

The memorandum ⁠of understanding ⁠between the United States ⁠and Iran ⁠has been ‌signed by ‌president Donald ‌Trump and vice-president JD ‌Vance and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher ⁠Qalibaf, a senior US official said on Monday.

Patrick Wintour

The basic structure of the US-Iran deal reached late on Sunday – a return to the prewar status quo – has been on offer from Iran for more than a month. So has the specific architecture: an immediate unwinding of the consequences of the US-Israeli war through the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and a deferral of the actual negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme, the ostensible cause of the war.

The concept of a 60-day ceasefire to resolve these issues has also been a fixture for more than a month.

But it has taken the mounting pressure on the US and Iranian economies for both sides to recognise politically that a return to all-out war was unlikely to resolve the impasse, and if so, compromises would have to be struck.

Both sides had to relent on the complex issues holding up a deal: the future governance of the strait of Hormuz, the economic sweeteners – including sanctions relief – that needed to be offered to Iran, and the agenda for the deferred nuclear talks, including what preconditions would be set and how much ambiguity could be tolerated.

Iranian negotiators will now travel to Doha to try to work out some of the shaky implementation aspects of the deal before a signing ceremony on Friday in Geneva – the city US negotiators left on 28 February, the day the war began, when a far superior nuclear offer to now was being offered by the Iranians.

Shipping through the strait of Hormuz remained virtually at a standstill on Monday, tracking platforms indicated, despite US president Donald Trump’s claim that crossings were resuming under his deal to end the war with Iran.

Trump said Monday that loaded oil tankers were “starting to move” out of the strait, apparently on a route near to Oman, in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Announcing the accord with Iran on Sunday, he had said that the strait could reopen immediately after the scheduled signing of the agreement on Friday.

At 2pm GMT on Monday, tracking firm Kpler had detected only one commodities carrier crossing the strait during the day with its transponder switched on.