Iran and the US remain divided over the sequencing of a diplomatic agreement, Al-Akhbar reports via Kan

Sequencing disputes are a familiar stall point in US-Iran negotiation rounds: sanctions relief and frozen-asset release are the assets Tehran can monetise only once, so it has historically resisted spending them before nuclear terms are locked, while Washington has equally consistently demanded verifiable nuclear steps before relief flows. Episodes of this kind have tended to oscillate between rounds of deadlock and intermittent escalation rather than resolve cleanly, and crude has typically priced a risk premium that builds on threats to Gulf transit and bleeds off when talks are merely reaffirmed rather than concluded. The mechanism that matters is Hormuz itself: a large share of seaborne crude transits the strait, so any condition tying its reopening to sanctions removal links the diplomatic track directly to freight rates, war-risk insurance and prompt crude spreads, not just flat price. The distinction worth drawing is between rhetorical impasse, which history shows fades quickly from the strip, and any move against shipping or enforcement of the blockade, which is what has previously forced a durable repricing. The tells from here are whether intermediaries produce a bridging formula on sequencing, whether either side shifts its ordering of preconditions, and actual tanker traffic through the strait. As a report of continued division via secondhand regional sourcing, this reads as a stalemate headline rather than an escalation one.