The Wall Street Journal dropped a significant story late Monday night that immediately sent futures higher and oil prices tumbling: Trump has privately told senior aides he is willing to end the military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely blocked.
The report, citing administration officials, said Trump and his team have concluded that a military operation to reopen Hormuz would push the conflict well beyond the four-to-six week window he promised, and that reopening the strait should be handled separately through diplomatic pressure and allied action after the primary combat phase ends.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the framing at Monday’s briefing, clarifying that the Hormuz opening was not among the “core objectives” Trump set for Operation Epic Fury when US and Israeli strikes began on February 28.
The core objectives, as Leavitt outlined them, were: destroying Iran’s navy, dismantling its missile and drone capabilities, weakening regional proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis, and preventing nuclear weapons development. Trump’s team is privately assessing that these goals have been substantially met.
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf had accused the US of “secretly planning a ground invasion while engaging in a front of diplomacy” — a claim the WSJ report partly vindicates by revealing internal discussions that diverged from Trump’s public statements threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless Hormuz opened immediately.
Netanyahu’s response added a separate dimension: the Israeli prime minister suggested in an interview with Newsmax that a “long-term solution” to the Hormuz problem could involve rerouting Gulf state energy pipelines westward across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea and Mediterranean, bypassing Iranian geographic leverage entirely — a proposal that would take years and billions of dollars to execute.
Marco Rubio told Al Jazeera that Hormuz “will reopen one way or another” through either Iranian compliance or a coalition effort, but declined to specify a timeline. The statement left open the possibility that Hormuz could remain at least partially closed for months after any ceasefire.
For markets, the WSJ revelation was the most positive single signal since the war began: futures reversed sharp declines and oil dropped, because any scenario where the war ends — even with the strait not immediately cleared — is better than a scenario where combat operations continue escalating. The market is not asking for a perfect outcome, just for a direction toward less disruption.
