The meeting between Trump and Xi came a day after US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held a new round of indirect negotiations with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Axios reports

The structure here is instructive: Tehran is bundling the Strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief, and a regional ceasefire into a single package, which mirrors its historical approach of linking the nuclear file to broader regional files, a linkage Washington has typically resisted. The US riposte that Iran does not control the strait is itself a familiar bargaining posture, since threats to Hormuz have historically functioned as Iranian leverage rather than as an executable policy; actual closures have never been sustained, and the credible-risk premium in crude has tended to fade once diplomatic channels reopen. The sequencing matters more than the content: envoys without formal diplomatic rank negotiating ahead of a leadership-level meeting is the standard shape of exploratory track-two contact, and outcomes at that level have historically depended on whether the principals endorse or disown the terms floated. The near-term tells are whether the proposal is acknowledged publicly by either capital, whether the intermediaries are re-tasked for a second round, and whether any de-escalatory steps on shipping or enforcement precede further talks. As long as the channel stays open, precedent argues for containment of the geopolitical premium rather than its removal.