Iran has offered US oil-and-gas ‘prize’ in talks, Trump says

According to international media reports, including Bloomberg and Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Iran has begun charging oil tankers for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian outlets such as the state-owned Mehr News Agency and Tabnak—affiliated with Mohsen Rezaei, senior military adviser to Iran’s new leader—had previously reported that Tehran was considering the strait as a potential source of revenue for the Islamic Republic.

News reports say Iran is charging around $2 million per tanker. However, because U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from conducting international banking, it remains unclear what currency is being used and who ultimately receives the payments.

Earlier, Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced that various countries and oil companies should contact Tehran directly to coordinate safe passage.

The idea of monetizing control of the strategic waterway has also been echoed in Iranian political commentary. The IRGC-linked daily Javan wrote that it was Iran’s new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who first introduced the concept.

“He revived a forgotten historical truth in the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf,” the newspaper wrote on Tuesday, March 24.

In an editorial titled “The Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s Winning Card in the Post-War Order,” Javan argued that the waterway should become a strategic lever for the Islamic Republic and “the most important fund to compensate Iran’s losses in the war.”

According to the paper, this framework was outlined in Mojtaba Khamenei’s first message to the nation.

Under the heading “A Strategic Package for Compensation of Losses,” the editorial said Iran now needs a comprehensive, multilayered doctrine to prevent circumvention of its new arrangements. Taxes, it said, would be based on “the nature of the cargo” and “the degree of cooperation between the ship’s country of origin and the aggressors.”

Javan estimated that under such a framework regional states would need to pay $50 per barrel to compensate Iran’s losses and contribute to reconstruction efforts.

Ships belonging to Israel and the United States, it added, would be barred from the strait even under a different flag.

Under a section titled “Redefining Negotiations,” the paper said Israeli and U.S. vessels could use the waterway only if one sanction on Iran were lifted for each passage.

The argument rests on the claim—advanced by Iranian commentators—that international law allows states to levy fees to ensure the security of waterways under their control.

With control over several islands and strategic points in the Persian Gulf, and full control of the waterway’s northern shore, Iran holds a uniquely strategic position, the IRGC-linked daily argued.

The paper concluded: “This package sends a clear message to all players inside and outside the region: the era of imposing sanctions on Iran is over, as no country can benefit from Persian Gulf security for free.”

Whether the United States, regional states, or their partners in South Asia would accept Tehran’s unilateral framework and comply with its demands remains uncertain.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Tuesday that Islamabad was “ready and honoured to be the host” for direct or indirect negotiations if both sides agree.

The proposal comes amid reports that Pakistan has been relaying messages between the two sides and could potentially host discussions if they progress to that stage.

Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, spoke with President Donald Trump on March 23, while Sharif held a phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian the following day as part of a push for de-escalation.

Trump announced a five-day pause in planned strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure on Monday, saying there had been “productive conversations” about potential diplomacy. Iranian officials, however, insist no direct negotiations with Washington have taken place.

Pakistan is one of several countries—alongside Turkey and Egypt—that appear to be passing messages between Washington and Tehran while encouraging diplomatic contacts.

What role is Pakistan playing?

Pakistan is positioning itself as both messenger and potential host.

Its prime minister and army chief have spoken with leaders in Washington and Tehran while publicly offering Islamabad as a venue should talks take place.

Pakistani officials describe the effort as part of broader back-channel diplomacy aimed at reducing tensions.

Why Pakistan?

Pakistan maintains working relationships with both Iran and the United States, giving it unusual access to the two governments.

Since 1992, Iran’s interests section in Washington—which handles limited diplomatic matters after the two countries severed relations in 1980—has operated under the protection of the Pakistani embassy.

Pakistan also has political and military ties with the United States. That combination allows Islamabad to communicate with both sides while avoiding the perception that it is fully aligned with either.

Has Pakistan tried this before?

Yes, though usually behind the scenes.

In 2019, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan publicly offered to mediate during a period of heightened US-Iran tensions after speaking with leaders in both countries.

Pakistan has periodically offered to help ease regional tensions, though mediation efforts have rarely moved beyond preliminary diplomacy.

Will it actually lead to negotiations?

That remains uncertain.

Iranian officials have publicly insisted that no negotiations with Washington are taking place. The White House has also avoided confirming any talks, saying it will not negotiate through the media.

Israel has meanwhile signaled that its military operations against Iran will continue regardless of diplomatic developments.

Pakistan’s proposal therefore represents a potential diplomatic channel rather than a confirmed breakthrough. Whether talks materialize will depend on whether Washington and Tehran conclude that diplomacy offers a way to limit the conflict.

The decisive moment in a regime’s collapse is often not the formal end, but the tipping point before it: the moment when the state’s aura of inevitability breaks.

Borders may still be guarded, television may still broadcast, officials may still issue decrees. But something more important has changed. The system no longer functions with confidence.

That pattern runs through modern history. Regimes die when authority thins out, and the forces meant to preserve the system begin to hesitate, fracture, defect or simply wait.

In Russia in 1917, the monarchy’s fate was sealed not only by crowds in the streets but by the refusal of troops and Cossacks to suppress them.

In Iran in 1979, the Shah’s regime effectively ended when the armed forces declared neutrality.

In Romania in 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu’s fall accelerated when the army switched sides.

In East Germany, the Berlin Wall lost its political meaning the moment the border opening made it unenforceable.

In each case, the end came after something deeper had already broken: the state’s confidence in its own ability to command obedience.

The sequence before collapse

This is why a tipping point is best understood not as a date but as a sequence.

First comes long erosion: economic decline, loss of legitimacy, social anger, distrust inside the ruling camp.

Then comes a catalytic shock: a massacre, a fraudulent election, military defeat, a failed coup, or the death of the ruler around whom the system had been built.

Then comes the most important stage and the hardest to measure: the failed restoration of authority.

The regime still projects continuity, but no longer convincingly. It can still threaten, still punish, still broadcast. But it no longer reassures. Its command no longer feels unquestioned.

Only after that comes the formal end.

Iran’s compressed crisis

Iran’s recent trajectory fits that sequence with unusual force, appearing to compress into weeks the kinds of shocks that in other systems were spread over months or even years.

The country entered 2026 already weakened by deep economic distress and nationwide protest. Then came the January 8-9 crackdown.

More than 36,500 were killed, according to classified material Iran International reviewed. Other reporting and rights group assessments also describe the episode as mass killings on an extraordinary scale.

Mass killing can restore fear for a time. It can also destroy legitimacy more deeply and more permanently.

The next shock was even more consequential.

On 28 February, joint US-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, abruptly removing the central figure around whom the Islamic Republic had organized authority for decades.

That alone did not prove regime collapse. Systems can survive the loss of a leader if they can replace him quickly and credibly. But that is precisely where the next problem began.

The succession that followed looked less like a confident transfer of power than an emergency move under pressure.

Iran International reported that the IRGC pushed to install a successor outside normal legal procedures amid disarray in the chain of command and fears that people could return to the streets.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s elevation preserved the office, but did not clearly restore authority. A succession in such a system is meant to reassure the Islamic Republic’s core that command still exists and that the center is still holding.

Yet Mojtaba has remained unseen in any ordinary sense. His messages were still being issued only in writing or read by state television anchors over still images, with no direct public appearance or recorded voice.

In a system built around the symbolism and physical presence of supreme authority, that matters. A ruler who does not appear can hold a title, but cannot easily project command.

That, in turn, changes how the growing centrality of the Revolutionary Guards should be read. If the IRGC now appears to dominate more of the state, that does not necessarily mean the system is stronger. It may mean the opposite: that the wider governing structure has hollowed out and power has narrowed to its coercive core.

Even that core shows signs of strain.

Reports of disrupted chains of command, internal criticism of senior commanders, personnel failing to report to bases, and diplomats seeking asylum do not yet prove a terminal fracture. But they are the kinds of signals that often appear before loyalty begins to shift more openly.

What can appear as consolidation may, in fact, be contraction.

The moment before the streets

This is also why the absence of a full-scale uprising does not necessarily mean the Islamic Republic has restored confidence.

In collapsing systems, people do not always move at the first sign of weakness. They wait until repression looks less certain, until command appears thinner, until they believe the next confrontation may end differently from the last.

The decisive moment often comes not when society becomes angriest, but when the security forces are no longer sure they can, should, or will do what they did before.

That memory matters in Iran. January showed what happens when the state still has a functioning command structure and is prepared to kill on a massive scale. But the present moment is not January.

The command structure has been hit. The top leadership has been decapitated. The succession has not visibly restored confidence. The war has intensified military, political, and fiscal strain.

Quiet streets, in such a moment, do not necessarily mean submission. They may mean waiting for the right threshold.

What history suggests

None of this means the Islamic Republic’s end is settled. Regimes can survive extraordinary shocks, especially when coercion remains lethal and opposition forces lack a unified organizational center inside the country.

But history suggests a useful distinction. A system is often most vulnerable when it has been reduced to force alone.

That is often the stage at which the outer signs of continuity become misleading. The offices still function. Orders are still issued. Missiles may still fly. But the wider architecture that gave those acts political meaning has begun to fail.

The question is no longer simply whether the Islamic Republic still exists on paper. It does.

The more important question is whether it still functions as a regime in the full sense: with authority that travels clearly, loyalty that holds under pressure, and institutions that do more than keep violence in motion.

History suggests that when those things begin to fail together, the tipping point is no longer far behind.

US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said the payment followed nearly two decades of litigation over assets connected to 650 Fifth Avenue, a 36-story building authorities said concealed financial interests of the Iranian government through Bank Melli.

“Iran has sponsored terrorism for decades... Since the inception of this litigation… we pursued hidden Iranian government assets tied to a Manhattan skyscraper to ensure those funds would ultimately compensate victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism rather than terrorists and their enablers,” Clayton said in a statement.

The case began in 2008, when US authorities moved to seize assets linked to Bank Melli Iran, which had allegedly used front companies to maintain a stake in the building and bypass sanctions. Prosecutors said the structure allowed Iran to generate income from the property while concealing ownership.

The 650 Fifth Avenue tower was built before the 1979 revolution by the Pahlavi Foundation as a source of revenue, but control of the property passed to the Islamic Republic after the fall of the monarchy. In later years, the foundation was renamed the Alavi Foundation, while Bank Melli acquired a stake in the building that US authorities say was managed through front companies known as Assa.

Under a final settlement reached in January 2025 between the US government, victims’ groups and the building’s owners, $318 million will be paid to victims. The initial $129 million installment was completed on March 20, with the remaining $189 million to be paid over three years with interest.

Clayton said the case reflected the Justice Department’s goal of “vindicating the rights of victims of the Government of Iran’s long-standing policy of supporting and promoting terror attacks across the world.”

Victims eligible for compensation include those affected by attacks attributed to Iranian-backed groups, including the 1984 bombing of US military facilities in Beirut, the September 11 attacks and other incidents targeting civilians.

As part of the settlement, the partnership controlling the building is being dissolved, and ownership transferred to a new entity, with approvals from US authorities including the Treasury Department.

Exchanging threats—sometimes several times a day—has become the dominant mode of communication between Tehran and Washington.

The IRGC-linked Fars News Agency denied that any contact had taken place between the two sides, while a senior commander escalated the rhetoric live on Iran’s state broadcaster.

“We will hit you so hard that your dentures will be knocked out of your mouth.”

Major General Abdollahi of the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbia Headquarters also vowed to deploy “a new secret weapon that will bring an end to the enemy’s operations.”

Over the past two days, following Trump’s threat to strike Iran’s power-generation infrastructure unless Tehran unconditionally opens the Strait of Hormuz, several Iranian commanders and officials have issued counter-threats.

The core message was captured in an IRGC statement quoted by Entekhab on March 23: “We will respond to any attack immediately and at the same level.”

Entekhab also cited an IRGC spokesperson elaborating on Tehran’s position: “They hit schools and hospitals, but we did not reciprocate. If they attack power plants, we will strike power plants in countries that host US bases.” That would include much of the Middle East.

In a March 22 post on X, Esmail Saghab Esfahani, Iran’s vice president for energy optimization and strategic management, responded to Trump’s ultimatum.

“The Strait of Hormuz game has put so much pressure on Trump that he has issued a 48-hour ultimatum—unaware that the next move, which is the destruction of the most important electricity and water infrastructure of the Zionist regime and the United States in the region, will put even more pressure on him,” he wrote.

Saghab Esfahani also suggested that residents of Israel and people in countries hosting Iran’s adversaries would be wise to store water and charge their phones during those 48 hours.

Nour News, an outlet close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, responded with a mix of defiance and warning.

“Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s electrical infrastructure is an explicit admission of a war crime and a sign of desperation,” it said.

In the hours before Trump’s deadline, a different narrative was circulating among many Iranian social-media users—particularly within opposition circles.

Rather than targeting infrastructure that ultimately serves the Iranian public, they urged the United States and Israel to focus on dismantling the security apparatus that underpins the state’s repressive machinery.

The tension was heightened further by an IRGC statement announcing what it described as a shift in Iran’s military doctrine—from a defensive posture to an offensive one.

As for ordinary Iranians, many appear increasingly anxious about how attacks on infrastructure might affect their already strained daily lives.

In Tehran—unlike in US markets—there has been no calm after Trump’s announcements. The drums of war are growing louder.