Donald Trump said on Tuesday 9 June that an Iran deal was in "the final throes", that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen "immediately upon signing, which could be in two or three days", and that the US naval blockade had "turned out to be much stronger than bombing"1. the strait of Hormuz is The Persian Gulf chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil passes.
The line about the blockade matters more than the timeline. CENTCOM (US Central Command, the Pentagon's Middle East command) runs that blockade on a written military order, not a presidential instrument, and it has redirected 127 vessels and disabled six without an executive signature behind it. On Tuesday Trump elevated that unsigned mechanism above kinetic force in public for the first time, even as the one ally executing kinetic force ignored him.
Trump has floated near-term deals before, telling reporters on 4 June a deal could close "this weekend" before his own Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said on 7-8 June that enrichment matters could take months. For 102 days his words pointed at Tehran. This week the harder words pointed at Israel instead, while the deal stayed a promise rather than a document.
Tehran negotiates through written positions and general-officer shuttles, channels that respond to signed paper, not to interview cadence. A blockade Trump now calls war-winning and a deal he says is days away both rest on the same absence: no signature that would force the War Powers clock or bind either side to terms.
