Iran will be ready to discuss the nuclear issue only after the Strait of Hormuz issue is resolved and Washington lifts the blockade, reports Russia's RIA citing an Iranian diplomatic source

In past episodes of this kind, maximalist preconditions attributed to diplomatic sources have tended to mark the opening of a negotiating cycle rather than the closing of one, with the terms subsequently diluted through intermediaries before any direct contact. The notable feature here is that the strait itself is being used as the conditioning asset, which historically is when Hormuz risk has been most durable: rhetoric alone has moved crude only briefly, while the episodes that sustained premia were those involving actual interference with shipping, tanker seizures, or spikes in war-risk insurance and freight rates through the chokepoint. The sequencing demand also inverts the usual Western position, which has been that nuclear compliance precedes sanctions relief, so acceptance of the framing is itself a signal to watch. The tells from here are whether the position is repeated by named officials rather than a sourced diplomat, whether transit volumes and insurance pricing through the strait actually deteriorate, and whether mediator channels in the Gulf or Europe produce a face-saving formula that decouples the two files. As a source-based wire report via Russian state media, the placement itself is part of the choreography.