World News
Sixty-day window for a United States and Iran settlement expires with no agreement
By Staff Writer | 17 August 2026
The interim understanding signed on 17 June runs out on Monday with the Strait of Hormuz still disrupted, sanctions on Iranian oil restored and each government waiting for the other to move first. Washington says new financial measures are days away.
The 60-day period that the United States and Iran set themselves to turn their 17 June interim understanding into a wider settlement expires on Monday with no agreement in place, no extension arranged and no talks under way. The war that began on 28 February, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran, is now nearly six months old.
We did not have a ceasefire that now needs to be extended. We had an end to the war, which has now taken on a new status
Abbas Araghchi, Foreign Minister of Iran
The 14-point memorandum of understanding, negotiated in Islamabad and signed on 17 June, was intended as an interim framework: an end to the fighting, a path towards restoring shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and a window in which negotiations on a longer-term nuclear agreement could begin. Extensions were possible by mutual consent. Mr Araghchi said Tehran had yet to decide whether to resume negotiations with Washington at all.
What the sixty days were meant to deliver
Little of it has happened. Shipping through the strait, which carried about a fifth of the world's oil and gas before the war, remains severely disrupted. Washington has restored sanctions on Iranian oil and reinstated its naval blockade of Iranian ports. There has been little indication of substantive negotiation on the nuclear programme since June.
The two positions are now stated openly. Washington wants Iran to reopen the strait before it fulfils further commitments. Tehran says the United States must first honour undertakings it says were made in June, including the release of frozen Iranian assets.
Each government appears to believe that economic and political pressure will bring the other back to the table on better terms, and neither is preparing its public for concessions.
Pressure in place of talks
President Donald Trump told a crowd in New York on Friday that "there's nobody to negotiate with", urged Americans to accept paying more for fuel, and described the blockade of Iranian ports as a "wall of steel". He repeated a remark that he would soon declare the strait a territory of the United States; the White House gave no detail of any plan behind it, and Iran's deputy foreign minister rejected the assertion outright.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the United States would apply measures against Tehran that had "never been seen", as soon as the coming week. The conflict has already pushed up the cost of fuel, food and other goods in the United States, and Mr Trump's opponents intend to make prices and the war central questions in November's midterm elections.
Neither government has declared the June understanding dead, and neither is acting as though it survives. What remains of it is the absence of large-scale strikes since late July, and each side's conviction that the other will weaken first.