The U.S. and Iran have agreed to end days of back-and-forth fighting around the Strait of Hormuz and resume peace talks, said officials from the U.S. and other countries involved in the negotiations.

The dangerous period of violence that began Thursday disrupted President Trump's attempt to end hostilities with Iran and negotiate a settlement that addresses Tehran's nuclear program. Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz fell during the tit-for-tat strikes, slowing the recovery of a waterway through which 20% of the world's crude oil once flowed. A U.S. official said vessels would now move freely.

The U.S. offered to hold talks with Iran at a summit in the Qatari capital of Doha, some of the officials said. The summit in Doha details have yet to be finalized, some of the officials said, but could take place as early as Tuesday and would focus on Hormuz, which has again come to the fore of the conflict.

Axios earlier reported the agreement to stop fighting and resume talks.

During the worst fighting since both sides signed a memorandum of understanding for peace talks on June 17, Iran asserted the exclusive right to manage traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, citing language that puts the onus on Tehran to arrange the resumption of shipping.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that Iran is assuming sole authority over the strait. "The management and full restoration of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is Iran's responsibility," Araghchi said Sunday, according to state media. "No other country or entity has any responsibility or authority in this matter."

His statement is at odds with American arguments that the deal doesn't give Iran control and that navigation must be unimpeded in the international waterway.

The fighting restarted Thursday when Iran attacked a ship trying to cross the strait while hugging the coast of Oman. Tehran wants ships to follow a separate course along its own coastline and had warned ships against using the U.S.-backed Omani route.

U.S.-Iran peace talks were supposed to resume over the weekend in Switzerland, some of the officials said. But they stalled over the Hormuz fighting, they said. Last week in Switzerland, Iran and the U.S. agreed to create a hotline to avoid attacks in Hormuz but the mechanism has yet to be activated, the people said.

The fighting rattled shipowners and threw a budding reopening of the waterway into doubt. The U.S.-Iran preliminary deal pushes discussions of more contentious issues, including Iran's nuclear program, into a second phase.

The renewed fighting came days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the region to rally U.S. support for three countries hardest hit by Iranian drone and missile attacks. On his visit to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, Rubio voiced hope for a diplomatic off ramp but warned Trump had many options available to respond to any renewed Iranian attacks.

The deal assigns responsibility for opening the strait to Iran. It says "the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels" and that Iran, in consultation with others in the region, will determine the terms for the future of administration and maritime services of the strait.

But the deal also says military obstacles should be cleared and traffic should resume immediately.

America's ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, said the U.S. wouldn't tolerate further attacks on ships.

"If the Iranian regime thinks for a second that President Trump is going to sit by, stand by, while Iran continues to attack international shipping without a response or our bases without a response, they're sadly mistaken," he said on Fox News. "And they saw that loud and clear over the last few nights."

Iran struck two vessels in recent days, a containership and a tanker carrying oil from Qatar, a mediator in the talks with the U.S. The U.S. responded with attacks on Iranian communications, drone and missile sites along the coast of the strait. Iran then attacked Kuwait and Bahrain.

"The U.S. is testing Iran's resolve," said Mohamed Amersi, an Iran expert and member of the Global Advisory Council of the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. The escalation has been managed thus far, he said.

Iran effectively closed the strait by attacking ships early in the war. The U.S. military guided a number of ships through the chokepoint, but has struggled to deprive Iran of the ability to threaten shipping, keeping traffic at a fraction of prewar levels, when a fifth of the world's oil moved through the strait.

The U.S. has repeatedly pounded sites along the Hormuz coast, but Iran continues to land attacks on ships when it chooses to escalate.

Aside from new U.S.-Iran volleys, American forces shot down two other drones targeting commercial shipping on Saturday.

Trump, in a weekend statement on social media, suggested he was losing patience with Iran. "There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started," Trump wrote. "If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!"

Meanwhile, the Joint Maritime Information Center, a U.S.-U.K. navy body, raised its maritime security threat level in the Strait of Hormuz to "substantial" on Saturday, citing the new attacks on merchant vessels.

Iran's Assembly of Experts, an advisory body that tends to reflect the view of its supreme leader, told the country's negotiators Saturday that the strait should be closed if Israel doesn't stop operations in Lebanon.

"The opening of the Strait of Hormuz is contrary to the obligations of the officials and is considered a strategic mistake," the assembly said. The assembly, which elects the supreme leader, also said Iran's nuclear rights were off limits in the talks.

The violence over the strait drew attention away from a U.S.-brokered agreement signed by Israel and Lebanon on Friday laying out a framework for peace between two countries that have technically been in a state of war for nearly eight decades. However, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group, rejected the agreement Saturday and vowed to keep fighting Israel.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 28, 2026 19:40 ET (23:40 GMT)

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