20AUG

Trump expects Iran reply; signs nothing

3 min read

16:36UTC

Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday 10 May he expected an Iranian reply to the MOU very soon, while the White House presidential-actions index recorded no signed Iran instruments. Treasury staff did the work instead.

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ConflictDeveloping

Key takeaway

Trump expects a reply Tehran has just publicly priced as structurally untradeable.

Donald Trump spent the weekend telling reporters at The White House that he expected an Iran reply "very soon" ¹. The White House presidential-actions index records zero signed Iran executive instruments since the war opened. Friday's OFAC SDN action came from Treasury staff under standing IRAN-CON-ARMS-EO authority, not a fresh presidential order. The pattern matches Trump's 8 May posture, where three contradictory positions in one day (offering negotiation, threatening force, claiming the war "militarily won") all coexisted with no signed instrument behind any of them .

Spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei is fronting Tehran's verbal track, dismissing the missed 9 May reply window. Mohammad Mokhber is fronting the doctrinal track, naming Hormuz a nuclear-equivalent the same day. Trump SAYS, OFAC DOES; Baqaei SAYS, Mokhber DOES. Both governments' verbal tracks describe negotiation while their operational instruments widen the war's commercial and physical perimeter. The proposal Iran failed to answer by Saturday now compresses Tehran's window to 10-12 May, before Trump boards for Beijing and the Xi Jinping summit later this week.

Pakistan's military chief Asim Munir has pledged continued mediation through the Islamabad back-channel, but the Iranian doctrinal statement makes the trade Pakistan is supposed to broker structurally harder. Tehran has now publicly raised the bar on what verification access would have to deliver in return. Trump's verbal pressure operates on the assumption that escalation costs Iran more than holding out; the doctrinal statement is Tehran's reply that Hormuz leverage is worth more than relief from sanctions designations Treasury keeps expanding anyway.

Xi Jinping sits in Beijing with the leverage of MOFCOM's Blocking Rules order , the NFRA yuan-loan halt the Bessent letters triggered , and now the SDN designation of CGSTL on the Chinese commercial space sector. Trump arrives without a signed Iran instrument to trade, which leaves the negotiation reliant on the verbal track at exactly the point where the operational track has done all the talking on both sides.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

When the US president signs an executive order, it becomes official government policy with legal force, creates accountability, and puts things on the record. Trump has been talking about Iran for 71 days: threatening, promising talks, calling strikes a 'love tap', expecting replies 'very soon'. But none of it has been signed. The US government's official Iran sanctions actions in this period came from Treasury staff using old standing powers, not new presidential orders. Iran's government, when deciding whether to reply to the peace proposal, has to judge whether Trump's words carry any binding force. Baqaei stated on 9 May that Iran does not pay attention to deadlines, a response consistent with 71 days of unsigned US statements that could be reversed without legal process.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The White House presidential-actions index records zero Iran-related instruments across 71 days because presidential instruments commit the executive branch, constrain the president's own future options, and create congressional notification obligations under the War Powers Act.

Verbal statements and Truth Social posts carry none of those constraints. Trump's Iran management is designed around a maximum-flexibility operating model that his own legal team appears to have decided is best served by keeping all Iran commitments in the verbal domain.

The institutional consequence is that OFAC's 8 May SDN action operated under standing authority accumulated across prior administrations, not a new presidential order. Treasury was not waiting for White House direction; it was using pre-existing legal infrastructure.

This separation of verbal presidential track from institutional operational track allows the government to maintain maximum-pressure sanctions while leaving the president's verbal track available for diplomatic signalling in either direction.

What could happen next?

Risk
Iran's Baqaei explicitly dismissed deadlines as irrelevant. Without a signed US instrument that creates legal obligations, Tehran has no mechanism to assess Washington's credibility and no basis for a written reply that commits Iranian state resources.
Immediate · 0.81
Consequence
Trump boards for Beijing on or around 14 May. If no MOU reply arrives before departure, the Iran negotiation pauses while Trump pursues the Xi summit, handing Iran a de facto extension of the current blockade status quo.
Short term · 0.76
Meaning
The verbal-only pattern means all major US Iran commitments, including the Operation EPIC FURY declaration and the 15,000-personnel CENTCOM announcement, remain legally ungrounded and reversible without process.
Medium term · 0.79

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-left-leaning sources from Qatar

Qatar

Primary parallel: During the 1986 Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration ran a covert Iran arms channel through NSC staff for fourteen months without a signed presidential finding. The verbal-only track enabled the operation but also made it legally indefensible when exposed; Trump's 71-day verbal-only Iran campaign carries the same structural risk of implementation ambiguity and retrospective deniability.

Counter-parallel: In August 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed National Security Directive 45 within three days of Iraq's Kuwait invasion, establishing the legal framework for Operation Desert Shield.

The rapid signing enabled coalition building because allies could read the signed US commitment and calibrate their own positions. Baqaei's explicit dismissal of deadlines illustrates the same logic in reverse: without a signed US instrument, Tehran has no basis on which to assess Washington's credibility.

Consensus view: Brookings Institution's Suzanne Maloney assesses the verbal-only pattern as structurally intentional rather than administratively delayed. Trump's 71-day run without a signed Iran instrument allows him to claim credit for any diplomatic progress through Witkoff or Pakistan without creating a reversible executive paper trail that constrains future options. Verbal commitments can be withdrawn without legal process; signed EOs cannot.

Counter-view: AEI's Michael Rubin argues the signing gap reflects internal White House disagreement rather than deliberate strategy: Hegseth's 'not a regime-change war' position and Rubio's 'welcome ending the governing system' statement reflect a cabinet whose Iran policy lacks a coherent written doctrine, so no instrument gets signed because no instrument has survived interagency review.

Key tension: Whether the absence of signed instruments leaves Trump maximum flexibility ahead of the Beijing summit, or whether the pattern signals that Washington lacks the internal consensus needed to credibly commit to any written deal with Tehran.

First Reported In

Update #93 · Tanker hits Doha while Qatar mediates

Al Jazeera· 10 May 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Trump expects Iran reply; signs nothing

The verbal-versus-kinetic mirror is now explicit on both sides: Trump and Baqaei talk while OFAC and Mokhber act, with the operational pace setting the war's perimeter rather than the negotiating one.

Led to

Iran's 10-point reply, Trump's 14-second rejection

Trump's 10 May anticipation of an Iranian reply preceded the actual transmission and verbal rejection cycle that played out the same day.

Occurred 10 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

UK Maritime Trade Operations

UKMTO logged six armed men boarding a tanker 136 nautical miles east of Al Mukalla on 20 August and redirecting it toward Somalia. A vessel steered toward the Somali coast reads as an attempted seizure, a distinct hazard from the stand-off strikes the same lane has seen before.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Iran's Majlis speaker received Iraq's Hormuz carve-out request in Baghdad on 19 August, a request that treats passage as Tehran's to grant. Ghalibaf's authority over that grant sits alongside the Revolutionary Guard's separate transit rules, which have moved independently of Iran's foreign ministry before.

Haibat al-Halbousi

Iraq's parliament speaker asked Iran for special consideration on Iraqi Hormuz oil exports during Ghalibaf's 19 August Baghdad visit. Iraq presses the request from a weak position: Iran's central bank is simultaneously demanding Baghdad release Iranian reserves parked in Iraqi accounts.

Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research

Switzerland's economics ministry updated the Article 21 forms governing lawful Iran money transfers on 19 August, with only the revised forms accepted from 26 August. Bern operates one of the few remaining legal Iran payment channels and has just set a hard cutover on its control point.

Motegi Toshimitsu

Japan's foreign minister said in Muscat on 20 August that Tokyo wants closer coordination with Oman on safe Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb passage. Japan has no naval presence of its own in the strait, so it is routing the ask through the state negotiating with Iran instead.

Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi

Oman's foreign minister joined Japan's in Muscat on 20 August to call for intensified coordination on Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb navigation. Oman also runs the mediation track with Tehran, so the appeal travels through the same channel as the negotiation.