WASHINGTON — The Navarro Report | National Desk
President Donald Trump signaled this week that his administration is prepared to let economic pressure, rather than renewed military strikes, do the work of forcing Iran back to the negotiating table, as the U.S.-Iran conflict grinds into its sixth month with a ceasefire in tatters and direct talks stalled.
“We are low-keying it,” Trump told Axios in a phone interview Sunday. “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.” The president added that Iran “is in very bad shape” economically, saying Tehran does not have the money to pay its soldiers.
On Monday, Trump went further, telling reporters that any resumption of formal talks would require Iran to compensate the United States, though he did not specify for what. His comments came as the administration leans on financial pressure through the Treasury Department’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, which officials say is now in its eighth round targeting Iran’s alleged shadow-banking network this year alone.
“Iran’s shadow banking system is buckling under Economic Fury, and the regime is running out of ways to move money,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement Friday, pledging to expose the networks and cut them off from the U.S. financial system.
The shift in tone comes amid a tenuous pause in direct strikes between the two countries following a ceasefire agreement reached earlier this summer that has since frayed. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Tehran is not currently engaged in talks with Washington, adding that Iran will not negotiate while the U.S. continues military pressure in the region.
Tehran’s conditions for resuming negotiations are extensive. According to Iranian officials, the country is demanding that the United States end its attacks on Iran and its regional allies, lift its naval blockade of Iranian ports, remove U.S. military forces stationed around Iran, lift sanctions, unfreeze Iranian assets and compensate Iran for war damages.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi has accused the United States of reinstating a naval blockade, resuming hostilities and reimposing sanctions in violation of a memorandum of understanding the two countries signed in June. The U.S. has said it resumed strikes after Iran fired on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
Trump claimed Monday that the U.S. Navy has swept the strait for mines and now maintains full control of the waterway. “It’s open now. Look, the only one that has control of the Strait of Hormuz right now is the United States Navy,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “They will, on occasion, drop a mine, and we find the mine,” he added, describing sporadic Iranian efforts to disrupt shipping.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in an interview with state-run media last week, acknowledged that Iran continues to face mounting pressure from sanctions and conflict, saying the external pressure was designed to weaken public support for his government. Despite the strain, MarineTraffic data show commercial shipping has continued to move through the strait, with at least ten vessels passing through in a recent 25-hour period.
The current standoff traces back to Trump’s first-term withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, negotiated under President Barack Obama, which Trump has long described as “one-sided.” Upon returning to office in 2025, Trump relaunched his “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Tehran, even as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress in March 2025 that the intelligence community’s assessment was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
Diplomatic efforts collapsed after Israel launched strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets in June 2025, escalating tensions that had built over months of failed negotiation rounds. The conflict has since drawn in regional players; Houthi forces in Yemen claimed an attack on a Saudi oil tanker earlier this month, and a Houthi strike on Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery was reported just last week.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has held talks with Araghchi and American negotiators in recent days over related regional tensions, including the situation in Lebanon, though officials on both sides caution that any breakthrough remains contingent on conditions neither side has yet agreed to meet.
For now, the administration’s strategy appears to be patience: let sanctions squeeze an already strained Iranian economy while avoiding a fresh round of direct military escalation. Whether that approach forces Tehran back to the table — or simply prolongs a costly stalemate — remains the central question hanging over U.S. foreign policy as the conflict enters its seventh month.
This article was produced using a Human-Directed AI Journalism model: reporting, sourcing, and editorial judgment directed by a human journalist, with AI assistance in research and drafting. All facts have been verified against primary and original news sources.