Trump meets key Iran war mediator as UAE reveals major oil export surge despite conflict
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — President Donald Trump met Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, on Monday at the White House as diplomatic efforts to end the war with Iran continue, even as Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns that negotiations remain far from a breakthrough and Tehran signals a willingness to negotiate without yielding to pressure.
The competing messages come as the Strait of Hormuz remains a major source of global economic disruption and regional governments push for a diplomatic solution to a conflict that has subjected Gulf countries to thousands of Iranian missile and drone attacks.
Speaking to reporters Sunday before departing for a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris, Rubio said there had been little progress in negotiations and rejected the terms put forward by Tehran.
"I wouldn't say we're on the verge of a breakthrough," Rubio said.
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He emphasized that Trump prefers a diplomatic settlement but described Iran's demands as unrealistic.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday that Tehran was prepared to negotiate an end to what he described as a prolonged state of neither war nor peace.
"We can negotiate with dignity and resolve the issue with dignity. We favor dialogue and negotiations," Pezeshkian said, according to Anadolu Agency on November 9, citing an Iranian presidential statement.
He said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had instructed officials to end the uncertainty but insisted that Iran would not surrender to coercion.
Trump, meanwhile, signaled Sunday that he was not seeking another escalation. In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," the president said he saw no reason to intensify the war with Iran while maintaining that the Strait of Hormuz was open.
Mediators have been discussing a two-day proposal under which the United States would lift its naval blockade and release some frozen Iranian funds. Tehran would then take steps toward renewed nuclear inspections and reopen the Strait of Hormuz before broader negotiations resumed, according to Axios on November 9.
The proposal has not been accepted by Washington, and significant differences remain over the terms of any agreement.
Nowhere are the consequences of the diplomatic stalemate clearer than in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping corridor connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
Before the war, the equivalent of roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and more than one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade passed through the waterway, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, making it one of the world's most strategically important maritime routes.
Since the conflict began, Iranian attacks, shipping restrictions and U.S. military operations have severely disrupted commercial traffic.
Despite the American naval presence, attacks on commercial vessels have continued.
Reuters reported Monday that tanker attacks in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz had accelerated sharply in October and continued into November. Iranian authorities also claimed that a tanker had struck a mine east of the strait on Sunday.
In an interview with Fox News Digital at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi, Amos Hochstein, a former senior adviser to President Joe Biden and now managing partner at TWG Global, challenged claims that the strait had effectively reopened.
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"There has been a hot conflict in the Strait of Hormuz on almost a nightly basis. Tankers are getting fired on, tankers are getting hit," Hochstein said.
"If you need a heavy U.S. military presence just to let an oil tanker go through, to me that's the definition of not open," he told Fox News Digital.
Hochstein argued that the extraordinary security measures required to protect commercial vessels demonstrate that normal navigation has not been restored.
Higher insurance premiums, the danger of additional attacks and restrictions on maritime traffic have continued to burden the global economy.
His assessment contrasts with the more optimistic picture offered by U.S. Central Command. In late October, Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM, said American forces had cleared primary shipping routes of Iranian mines and assisted thousands of commercial vessels transiting the waterway.
According to a CENTCOM statement reported October 25, more than 3,000 commercial vessels had successfully transited Hormuz with American military support over the preceding six months.
But for Hochstein, the ability of military forces to escort ships does not mean the commercial risks have disappeared.
He suggested that negotiations could proceed on separate tracks, with Washington concentrating on Iran's nuclear program while Gulf governments take a greater role in discussions over freedom of navigation and maritime security.
"Maybe the Gulf allies themselves should be the ones that are managing that part of the negotiation on the [strait] while the United States would manage the negotiations ... on the nuclear front," Hochstein told Fox News Digital.
Dr. Angela Wilkinson, CEO of the World Energy Council, said the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed the need to rethink global energy markets, which have traditionally prioritized efficiency over resilience.
"Efficiency is not enough. We have to have resilience," Wilkinson told Fox News Digital at ADIPEC.
"What we at the World Energy Council recommend is that we rebalance energy," she said, advocating solutions that address energy security, affordability and sustainability simultaneously.
"We have escalating logistics costs, but we've got new vulnerabilities of interdependency. And that's what we're navigating our way through."
For the UAE, the disruption has accelerated efforts to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.
The Emirates has invested in alternative routes, particularly its pipeline to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, outside the strait, allowing some oil exports to bypass the contested shipping corridor.
Al Nuaimi said the country had substantially increased its oil exports since the war began.
"We want the Strait of Hormuz to be open, to be respected according to international law, but we don't wait and make our country and our people hostages to others. … Before the war started on February 28th, we used to export 3.1, 3.2 million barrels a day. Now we are exporting almost 4.4."
UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei also said at ADIPEC on November 2 that the country's exports had, at times, exceeded prewar levels.
The country is also investing in new export routes, overseas storage capacity and shipping infrastructure to strengthen its ability to withstand future disruptions.
Hochstein praised the UAE and Saudi Arabia for anticipating the risks associated with dependence on a single maritime route.
"You can create alternative pathways and infrastructure, but those are redundancies," he said.
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His point was that alternative infrastructure can reduce the economic impact of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz but cannot entirely replace the waterway.
The wider consequences have been felt across international energy markets, with increased shipping costs and supply disruptions affecting consumers far beyond the Middle East.
In a separate exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Mohammed Baharoon, director general of the Emirati research center B'huth, argued that the confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz amounts to a separate economic war with consequences far beyond the region.
"The third war was Iran's war on global economy by blocking the Strait of Hormuz," Baharoon said. "And they've affected people in the Philippines, in India, in Brazil that has nothing to do with this conflict."
He argued that the disruption has exposed the vulnerability of countries dependent on a single shipping corridor, reinforcing the need for alternative pipelines, transportation networks and supply chains.
"And part of resilience is that you will not have only one outlet," he said.
Baharoon stressed that those investments were not simply emergency responses to the war but part of a longer-term effort to strengthen regional connectivity.
"The war might have accelerated the plans, but the plans have always been there," he said.
Even if Hormuz fully reopens, he argued, the region will still need more routes for international trade.
"We need more access, we'll need more supply chains. And we need them to be not only durable, resilient, but also redundant."
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response before publication.