Hormuz or Uranium

Iran put a new proposal on the table. Washington canceled the trip.

Tehran’s new three-stage proposal puts Hormuz governance first and the nuclear file last. Washington’s framework inverts that entirely: uranium first, Hormuz reopens only after nuclear terms are met. Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister spent the weekend flying between Muscat, Doha, Riyadh, and St. Petersburg, where he sat across from Putin and, notably, Russia’s military intelligence chief.

Also this week: Iraq has a new prime minister candidate, a businessman nobody had heard of until the day he was nominated. A missile strike on Ras Laffan, Qatar’s main liquefied natural gas export terminal, knocked out 17 percent of the country’s annual export capacity, with damage that could last five years. And in New York today, the global nuclear non-proliferation treaty opens its review conference at the worst possible moment.

Ghassan Tagi, Sakina Abdallah, and Leila Bazzi contributed to the Agenda this week. 

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Quote of the Day

“No one’s winning this war. Everyone’s losing. The region will never get back to the way it was.”
– Alan Eyre, former U.S. diplomat, NPR, Apr. 25

Washington Signals

Two Frameworks, No Overlap

Iran has put a new proposal on the table. Washington has already rejected it.

Tehran submitted a three-stage counter-proposal to U.S. mediators on Apr. 25 and 26, delivered through Pakistani, Egyptian, Turkish, and Qatari intermediaries who have been shuttling between the two sides since direct talks collapsed in Islamabad earlier this month. Stage one: a permanent ceasefire and binding guarantees that neither the U.S. nor Israel will resume military operations against Iran or Lebanon. Stage two: a new legal arrangement for governing the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply normally flows, in collaboration with Oman. Stage three: talks on the nuclear issue, but only after the first two stages are completed. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi put it plainly on his page on X: “The U.S. must choose — ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both.”

Washington’s response was a cancellation. President Trump abruptly called off a planned trip by Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and Senior Adviser Jared Kushner to Islamabad, where talks between the two sides have been taking place under Pakistani mediation. On Truth Social, Trump cited Iran’s internal dysfunction as his rationale. The White House acknowledged receipt of Tehran’s new proposal but expressed uncertainty about whether to pursue it. The cancellation is the clearest public signal that Washington has not embraced the new Iranian framework.

A senior State Department official told MBN why. “That is not a negotiation. That is a delay tactic disguised as a proposal. The nuclear file is the center of gravity. Hormuz is the leverage they are using to avoid addressing their uranium stockpile. What are we negotiating with? A delegation that cannot commit, presenting a framework that puts the only issue that matters at the Third Stage, which is to say, never. There is nothing to travel for until Iran is ready to talk about the uranium, not just the strait.”

The gap between the two proposals is not a matter of degree. Washington’s latest proposal, brought to Islamabad by U.S. negotiators, starts with Iran’s nuclear program. It demands a 20-year freeze on uranium enrichment, the process by which Iran increases the potency of uranium to levels that could be used in a weapon. It requires Iran to ship its existing stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for $20 billion in Iranian funds currently frozen in overseas accounts. And it calls for the permanent shutdown of Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. The U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, imposed on Apr. 13, stays in place until nuclear terms are met. Hormuz reopens as part of the nuclear deal, not before it. The White House’s public posture has been straightforward. A senior White House aide told me: “As President Trump said before, we hold all the cards now.”

Tehran’s demands invert that entirely. For the Iranians, Hormuz governance comes before the nuclear issue. The blockade, which Iran calls an act of piracy, must be lifted before nuclear talks can begin. Iran is also demanding reparations for war damages. And on enrichment, at the Islamabad talks, Iran offered a moratorium of “single digit” years in response to Washington’s demand for 20, a gap that has not closed.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sharpened Washington’s bottom line on Apr. 22: Iran must transfer its enriched uranium directly to the United States, not to a neutral third country. That position has not been walked back.

Washington says nuclear first, then Hormuz. Tehran says Hormuz first, nuclear never. Those two positions do not overlap. The Witkoff-Kushner trip was canceled because there is currently nothing in the middle.

Diplomatic Signals

Araghchi’s Tour

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attend a meeting at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library in Saint Petersburg, Russia on April 27, 2026. — Reuters

Iran’s top diplomat made three stops in 72 hours. Each one raises a different question about where this negotiation is actually heading.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Muscat, called his Qatari and Saudi counterparts, then flew to St. Petersburg to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, carrying a personal message from Iranian Supreme Leader. The tour came immediately after the Islamabad talks collapsed and immediately after Tehran sent its new proposal to Washington.

The meeting in Russia was not a courtesy call. Alongside Putin sat Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Admiral Igor Kostyukov, chief of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate, the GRU, the country’s primary military intelligence agency. A foreign minister’s meeting does not normally include a military intelligence chief. The Kremlin confirmed the agenda covered Iran’s nuclear program, ceasefire conditions, the status of U.S.-Iran negotiations, and possible joint Russia-Iran initiatives on the talks.

A senior State Department official told MBN what Washington sees in that room. “The GRU chief was present. That tells you everything you need to know about whether this is diplomacy or something else. Iran is shopping for a guarantor. But a guarantor that benefits from this war continuing on unfavorable terms for Washington is not a guarantor at all. It is a lifeline for Tehran to keep negotiating forever.”

Russia has been pushing to insert itself into a potential deal. Foreign Minister Lavrov repeated Moscow’s offer to take Iran’s enriched uranium for storage and reprocessing, adding it would not violate Iran’s right to enrich for peaceful purposes. That directly contradicts Washington’s demand that Iran transfer its stockpile to the United States, not a third country. “Transferring Iran’s stockpile to Moscow does not solve the problem,” the official told MBN. “It just moves it to a different address.”

Three questions remain unanswered. Is the Oman channel still the primary back channel, or has Moscow overtaken it? Is Pakistan still the main venue of the talks? And where does the Gulf fit in?

The Gulf Cooperation Council formally demanded in late March that Gulf states participate in any U.S.-Iran talks. They have not been included. A Gulf diplomat told MBN, “The Gulf is not in the room in Islamabad. We were not in the room in St. Petersburg. We are watching a deal architecture being built that directly affects our security, without our voice at the table. That is not acceptable.”

Iran’s three-stage proposal puts the nuclear question last. That is precisely what Gulf states warned against.

Multiple channels are in play. The question is whether they lead to the same deal, or whether Iran is using each one to buy time.

Iraq Watch

The Compromise Candidate

Iraq finally has a prime minister candidate. Nobody had heard of him until yesterday.

After months of deadlock, the ruling Shiite coalition, the Coordination Framework, nominated Ali al-Zaidi, a businessman and chairman of the National Holding Company, as its candidate for prime minister. President Nizar Amidi formally tasked him with forming a government hours after the announcement. Al-Zaidi has 30 days to present a cabinet to parliament for a simple majority vote.

His nomination is not the result of a consensus. Both outgoing Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had pushed their own candidates for months. Neither could win. After the constitutional deadline passed without agreement, both stepped aside. A coalition member told MBN that al-Zaidi’s name had not been seriously discussed in any previous meeting. His emergence was completely unexpected.

Washington has not objected. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said before the nomination, it had “no preferences regarding the next prime minister” as long as it was not al-Maliki. Sources inside the Coordination Framework told MBN that Washington didn’t signal any objections to al-Zaidi. That quiet clearance was part of why the Framework moved forward with him at all.

But the clearance comes with an unresolved question. Al-Zaidi previously served as chairman of Bank of the South, an Iraqi financial institution. Arabic-language reporting described the bank as subject to U.S. Treasury sanctions, but it does not show up in the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s official sanctions list as of Apr. 24, 2026. What is confirmed is that the U.S. Treasury has sanctioned individual Iraqi bank executives for laundering money on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Iran-linked militia groups. Whether those actions touched institutions connected to al-Zaidi has not been established. A senior State Department official told MBN the nomination is not the final step. “The shape of the cabinet and the direction of policy under his leadership will determine the future of the bilateral relationship,” the official said.

The Treasury Department’s designation of seven Iraqi militia commanders on Apr. 16 shows that it remains focused on Iran-linked financial networks in Iraq. Al-Zaidi’s banking past has not been publicly flagged as an obstacle. It has only been set aside for now.

Read more here

Featured Conversation

The Treaty’s Last Test

The agreement meant to stop nuclear weapons from spreading holds its review conference in New York this week. It arrives in crisis: no limits on U.S. and Russian arsenals, China building up, and Iran bombed while inspectors lose sight of its nuclear program.

MBN’s Editor-in-Chief Leila Bazzi spoke with Henry Sokolski, former U.S. Deputy for Non-Proliferation Policy at the Pentagon, about whether the system can still hold.

On whether the treaty is still functioning: “The question is, are we going to do what we need to do to strengthen it? Or are we going to just let it list and gracefully sink into the sea?”

On Iran’s nuclear timeline after the strikes: “We don’t know where everything might be or what stage of development they might be at. Some people say we bombed an awful lot; chances are they’re years away. Others say they might be weeks away. This is not simply an intelligence problem. This is baked in the cake.”

On the system’s fundamental contradiction: “You’re trying to destroy knowledge. They have the design. They know how the processes work. You may no longer need super-talented people to complete this. I don’t see tough enough demands on the Iranians that would make you comfortable with the uncertainties of where they might be.”