Tehran vows it is "fully prepared" as Washington throws out seven-day plan to reopen Hormuz

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has said Tehran is "fully prepared" for the war with the United States to resume, casting a pall over efforts to restart negotiations and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. His comments came after Washington rejected a seven-day roadmap the Iranian side had offered to clear the waterway of restrictions.

The rejection marked another setback in a back-channel effort to halt the fighting that has been running in fits and starts for months. According to Al Jazeera's live coverage, the American side dismissed the Iranian proposal outright, leaving the two governments no agreed framework for ending the hostilities or restoring commercial transit through the strategic shipping corridor.

The dispute is the latest instalment in a conflict that has already survived at least one interruption. Al Jazeera's related reporting tracks what has happened since a US-Iran memorandum of understanding was reached on June 17, and separately examines why strikes between the two countries resumed after that earlier lull. That sequence matters for understanding the current impasse: the memorandum apparently created expectations of de-escalation that neither side has been able to fully honour.

At the same time, Washington is not closing the door on diplomacy. US President Donald Trump said he expects additional talks with Iran this week, and claimed that the United States is going to win the war "very soon." The combination of a deadline-sounding prediction and an expectation of fresh negotiations suggests the White House is trying to keep two tracks open at once — pressure on Tehran, and an off-ramp.

Araghchi's remarks, however, pointed in the opposite direction. Rather than signal flexibility, the Iranian foreign minister framed his country as braced for the worst. In video remarks carried by Al Jazeera, he declared that Iran is ready for a "doomsday war." The language is notable for a diplomat at a moment when negotiations are supposedly still in progress, and it suggests Tehran is deliberately keeping its own options open while refusing to appear to be conceding.

Why the Strait of Hormuz matters is the single biggest reason the diplomatic standoff is drawing international attention. The narrow waterway links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, and a large share of the oil and liquefied gas moved out of the Gulf every day passes through it. A prolonged inability to reopen the strait therefore carries consequences that reach far beyond the battlefield, feeding into freight costs, insurance premiums and energy prices for importing countries that have little alternative supply in the short term.

Tehran has also been careful about how it presents its military posture at home. A photograph taken on a street in Tehran on September 27 showed Iranian missiles displayed beside a banner bearing the image of the country's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei — a public display designed as much for domestic audiences as for foreign observers. Such imagery typically accompanies periods of heightened tension, signalling to Iranian citizens that the leadership intends to hold firm.

Washington, for its part, has been publicly disputing pieces of Iran's narrative. Al Jazeera's live blog noted that the United States rejected a drone claim made on social media, dismissing an assertion circulated online rather than accepting it at face value. The episode illustrates the information war running alongside the physical one, where claims about equipment losses and battlefield events are amplified through social platforms before they can be verified.

Among the unresolved questions Al Jazeera is tracking is whether Iran has captured an unmanned US submarine. The claim, which has circulated publicly, goes to the heart of the military balance and to the type of assets each side is willing to risk in the waterway. Until such claims are independently substantiated, they remain contested, and competing versions of events are being pushed aggressively on both sides.

Analysts caution, however, that the rhetorical escalation obscures a fairly narrow practical question: what a reopening deal would actually require. A seven-day roadmap implies a rapid, staged sequence — a verifiable stand-down, a timetable for safe passage, and monitoring mechanisms — but such arrangements depend on reciprocal trust that has been eroded by repeated strikes and by at least one abandoned memorandum.

The coming days will test whether Trump's promise of further talks produces anything more tangible than the roadmap Tehran says was already on the table and was turned down. If Araghchi's posture holds, Iran may be preparing for the possibility that no agreement is reached quickly, while the White House continues to publicly forecast an imminent conclusion to the war.

For ordinary shippers and energy markets, the standoff offers little comfort either way. What is at stake is not only the future of the fighting, but whether the straat reopens on a schedule short enough to limit the economic damage. Until both sides sign onto a common timeline, the warning from Tehran remains the loudest signal: preparation for continued war, rather than a return to the negotiating table.