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 were nowhere near a breakthrough, while Tehran indicated it was open to talks but would not negotiate under pressure.
The conflicting signals emerged as the Strait of Hormuz remained a flashpoint for the global economy. Governments across the Gulf are pressing for diplomacy to end a conflict that has exposed the region to thousands of Iranian missile and drone attacks.
Rubio, speaking to reporters Sunday before leaving for a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris, 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.-Israeli conflict with Iran restricts maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, May 6, 2026. (Amr Alfiky/Reuters)
He stressed that Trump preferred a diplomatic resolution but said Iran’s demands were not realistic.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday that Tehran was ready to negotiate an end to what he called an extended 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.
Pezeshkian said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had directed officials to end the uncertainty, but he maintained that Iran would not capitulate to coercion.
Trump also indicated Sunday that he was not pursuing another escalation. In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” he said he saw no reason to intensify the war with Iran while insisting that the Strait of Hormuz remained open.
Mediators have been weighing a two-day framework under which the United States would lift its naval blockade and release some frozen Iranian funds. In return, Tehran would move toward renewed nuclear inspections and reopen the Strait of Hormuz before broader negotiations resumed, Axios reported November 9.
Washington has not accepted the proposal, and major disagreements continue to divide the two sides over the terms of a potential deal.
A satellite view of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial maritime passage linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and a vital artery for global energy supplies. (Amanda Macias/News Outlet)
Hormuz remains open to shipping—but the risks are rising
The diplomatic impasse is nowhere more visible than in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
Before the war, the route carried the equivalent of about one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and more than one-fifth of worldwide liquefied natural gas trade, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That made it one of the planet’s most strategically important shipping lanes.
Since the conflict erupted, Iranian attacks, shipping limits and U.S. military activity have badly 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 the Strait of Hormuz rose sharply in October and continued into November. Iranian officials also said a tanker struck a mine east of the strait on Sunday.
Speaking with News Outlet 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 returned to normal.
A view of the Port of Fujairah as the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran restricts maritime traffic through 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 Outlet.
Hochstein said the extraordinary security required to protect commercial ships showed that routine navigation had not been restored.
Higher insurance costs, the threat of further attacks and limits on maritime movement continue to weigh on the global economy.
His view differs from the more upbeat assessment offered by U.S. Central Command. In late October, Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, said U.S. forces had cleared key shipping routes of Iranian mines and helped thousands of commercial vessels pass through the waterway.
A CENTCOM statement reported October 25 said more than 3,000 commercial ships had successfully crossed the Strait of Hormuz with U.S. military support during the previous six months.
For Hochstein, however, military escorts do not eliminate the underlying commercial danger.
He said negotiations might be divided into separate tracks: Washington could focus on Iran’s nuclear program, while Gulf governments take a larger role in talks on freedom of navigation and maritime security.
“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 Outlet.
Dr. Angela Wilkinson, chief executive of the World Energy Council, said the turmoil in the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated the need to rethink energy systems that have long favored efficiency over resilience.
“Efficiency is not enough. We have to have resilience,” Wilkinson told News Outlet at ADIPEC.
The World Energy Council, she said, supports a more balanced approach that addresses energy security, affordability and sustainability at the same time.
“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, discusses the Iranian threat, regional security and the prospects for diplomacy with News Outlet in Abu Dhabi. (Efrat Lachter/News Outlet)
UAE reports higher oil exports despite the conflict
For the United Arab Emirates, the crisis has intensified efforts to reduce its reliance on the Strait of Hormuz.
The Emirates has developed alternate export options, including a pipeline to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman. Because the port lies outside the strait, the route allows some oil shipments to bypass the contested waterway.
Al Nuaimi said the UAE 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 likewise said at ADIPEC on November 2 that the country’s exports had occasionally surpassed prewar levels.
The UAE is also expanding export routes, overseas storage and shipping infrastructure to better withstand future interruptions.
Hochstein praised the UAE and Saudi Arabia for recognizing the dangers of depending on a single maritime corridor.
“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 examine energy security, technological innovation and artificial intelligence. (Efrat Lachter/News Outlet)
Alternative infrastructure can lessen the economic damage caused by disruptions in Hormuz, Hochstein said, but it cannot fully substitute for the waterway.
The fallout has spread across global energy markets. Rising shipping costs and interruptions to supplies are affecting consumers well beyond the Middle East.
In a separate exclusive interview with News Outlet, Mohammed Baharoon, director general of the Emirati research center B’huth, said the struggle over Hormuz had become a distinct economic conflict with consequences reaching 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 highlighted the vulnerability of nations dependent on one shipping route and underscored the need for alternate pipelines, transport links 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 short-term reactions to the war but part of a broader strategy to improve regional connectivity.
“The war might have accelerated the plans, but the plans have always been there,” he said.
Even after Hormuz is fully reopened, he said, the region will require additional routes to support 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 Outlet contacted the White House for comment but had not received a response before publication.
