De Telegraaf says Iran keeps the door to talks open; Welt says Tehran rules them out

The split. Two of the reports we hold describe the same Sunday in opposite terms, filed 51 minutes apart.

Nobody prints the conditions. All five reports are about demands sent to Washington. None states one. None names a mediator. Digi24 names the man who spoke — Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran's parliament and chief negotiator; HotNews.ro gives the office and not the name.

One voice under two reports. HotNews.ro cites AFP, Digi24 cites the Iranian agency IRNA carried by dpa. Both rest on Ghalibaf speaking on Sunday. No report we hold carries an American word that the conditions arrived.

Not settled. Whether talks are live. Welt puts the military's threat down to "unconfirmed reports" of a meeting of US representatives in a European country; no other report we hold mentions it. Only HotNews.ro dates the closure, to 28 February, and says it followed an attack by the United States and Israel.

This is a story about whether Iran will negotiate the reopening of the sea lane that carries the Gulf's oil and gas — and about European reports that cannot agree whether the negotiation exists.

How it got here. The Strait of Hormuz is the channel between Iran and Oman, and the only way out of the Persian Gulf by sea. Oil and gas loaded in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar leave through it or not at all, and Iran holds its northern shore. Washington and Tehran have had no embassies in each other's capitals since Iran's 1979 revolution, so messages between them pass through third countries. The 2015 nuclear agreement briefly gave them a table; the United States left it in 2018 and the sanctions returned. Since the Gaza war that began with the attacks of 7 October 2023, Iran and Israel have struck each other directly, and the United States, bound to Israel by its security commitments, has been drawn in. HotNews.ro reports that Iran closed the strait on 28 February after being attacked by the United States and Israel; it is the only report we hold that dates the closure or gives a reason for it.

Who is in it. Ghalibaf speaks for Iran as parliament speaker and chief negotiator. Iran's military issues its own warnings, separately from him, and the two are not saying the same thing. The mediators are named by nobody. Europe is not a party — it is a customer, which is why European papers are writing about a strait none of them border.

What is at stake. If Washington meets the conditions, the tankers move. If it does not, the reports we hold carry a threat of continuous attacks on US bases across the region, and, in De Telegraaf's words, "a decisive war".

Where it stands. Conditions sent, contents unknown, answer unreported.