Iran's Gharibabadi says the US is aware of Tehran's demands and if they are met, Iran will be ready to take the necessary steps to normalise relations, Iran International reports

Statements of this kind from Iranian officials are a recurring feature of the sanctions cycle: Tehran has historically paired conditional openness to normalisation with maximalist preconditions, and the operative question is always whether the demands referred to are sanctions relief, frozen assets, or security guarantees, since each implies a different negotiating timeline. For crude, the transmission channel is the potential return of Iranian barrels currently constrained by sanctions enforcement; past episodes of rapprochement have moved WTI and Brent through expectations of added supply well before any physical flow materialised, with the risk premium unwinding on headline progress and rebuilding on stalled talks. The actor matters: Gharibabadi has served as a diplomatic and legal-affairs voice rather than a decision-maker on the nuclear file, so remarks at this level have tended to signal positioning rather than policy, with confirmation historically requiring alignment from the Supreme National Security Council and the US side. The phrase about the US being aware of Tehran's demands implies a back-channel is live, which is the precondition that has preceded formal rounds in comparable episodes. Worth noting is the distinction between a full normalisation track and a narrow de-escalation or prisoner-and-assets arrangement, as the latter has historically been the more common near-term outcome and carries a smaller supply implication. Follow-ons are any corroboration from Washington, movement in sanctions enforcement on Iranian exports, and freight and insurance behaviour around Gulf loadings.