A source close to Iran's negotiating team rejected the White House's claim, saying there had been no direct Iran-US negotiations and that talks with Oman concerned sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, Fars News reports

• The source added that contacts with the US stopped after Washington violated the Islamabad agreement and that the latest talks were unrelated to the US.

Contradictory readouts from Washington and Tehran have been a recurring feature of this relationship, and the pattern in past episodes is that the market prices whichever account implies less escalation, then fades as the denial hardens. The material detail here is the venue and the subject: Oman has historically been the back-channel of choice for US-Iran contact, and talks framed around the Strait of Hormuz rather than the nuclear file sit in a different risk bucket, since Hormuz sovereignty rhetoric is the lever Tehran reaches for when it wants leverage on crude freight, insurance premia and the prompt spread rather than on sanctions relief. The assertion that direct contacts stopped after an alleged violation of a prior understanding is consistent with Tehran's long-standing posture of negotiating indirectly while publicly denying any direct engagement, a distinction that has mattered before when gauging how close or far the parties actually are. What tends to resolve these episodes is not the dueling statements but the follow-ons: whether Omani or other intermediaries confirm shuttle activity, whether tanker traffic and war-risk pricing through the Strait move, and whether either side escalates the rhetoric from diplomatic to military channels. As a single-sourced denial via state-linked media, the headline carries the usual credibility discount attached to Fars.