Iran fired live missiles into the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, shutting down traffic through the world's most critical oil chokepoint for several hours while President Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner sat across the table from senior Iranian officials in Geneva for a second round of nuclear talks.
The timing was not subtle. It was not meant to be.
According to Fox News, the exercise, dubbed "Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz," featured missile launches, drone operations, and signal-jamming scenarios, all reported by Tasnim News Agency, an outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Rear Adm. Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the IRGC Navy, signaled that Tehran stands ready to shut down the strait entirely if ordered by senior leadership.
So while diplomats exchanged pleasantries in Switzerland, the IRGC was rehearsing a blockade of 20% of the world's oil supply.
This is negotiation, Iranian-style. You don't come to the table with concessions. You come with leverage, or what you want the other side to perceive as leverage. Firing missiles into international waters while your diplomats are mid-handshake is the geopolitical equivalent of cleaning your gun during a business meeting.
The regime wants the world to understand that any deal comes at a price, and that walking away from one comes at a higher price. The Strait of Hormuz is the card Iran always plays when it feels cornered. It is the one piece of geography that gives a middling regional power outsized global influence.
U.S. Central Command responded with measured firmness, acknowledging Iran's right to operate in international waters while drawing a clear line. CENTCOM stated:
"U.S. forces acknowledge Iran's right to operate professionally in international airspace and waters. Any unsafe and unprofessional behavior near U.S. forces, regional partners or commercial vessels increases risks of collision, escalation, and destabilization."
CENTCOM had urged the IRGC back in late January, when the two-day live-fire exercise was first announced, to conduct its drills safely and professionally. Iran's response was to fire missiles into one of the busiest shipping lanes on earth and suspend commercial traffic.
The Trump administration has built up a significant military presence in the Middle East as these talks proceed. That context matters. The diplomatic track does not exist in a vacuum. It exists because Iran understands that the alternative is not a sternly worded letter from the UN.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, the president laid out his read on the situation plainly:
"They'll be very important and we'll see what can happen. It's been – typically Iran's a very tough negotiator. They're good negotiators or bad. I would say they're bad negotiators because we could have had a deal instead of sending the B-2's in to knock out their nuclear potential. And we had to send the B-2's. I hope they're going to be more reasonable. They want to make a deal."
Trump said he would be involved in the talks "indirectly." The message to Tehran was clear: there is a deal on the table, but the clock is ticking, and the B-2s have already demonstrated what happens when diplomacy stalls.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined the administration's conditions back in February, stating that for negotiations to be "meaningful," they would need to address Iran's ballistic missiles, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations across the region, its nuclear program, and its treatment of its own people. That is a comprehensive list. It is also the correct one.
Previous administrations, particularly the Obama administration, treated Iran's nuclear program as an isolated variable. Contain the enrichment, ignore the missiles, pretend the IRGC isn't funding proxies from Lebanon to Yemen, and call it progress. The result was the JCPOA: a deal that handed Iran billions in sanctions relief while leaving every other destabilizing behavior untouched.
The Trump administration is refusing to repeat that mistake. Linking the nuclear question to ballistic missiles, regional terrorism, and human rights is not an overreach. It is the only honest framework. A regime that fires missiles into international shipping lanes to make a diplomatic point is not a regime whose nuclear ambitions can be separated from its broader conduct.
The IRGC has threatened the Strait of Hormuz so many times that it risks becoming background noise. But the threat is not empty. The strait is roughly 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. Shutting it down, even temporarily, sends energy markets into immediate convulsions. Tuesday's exercise proved Tehran can halt traffic on command, even if only for hours.
The question is whether this saber-rattling reflects genuine confidence or the opposite. Regimes that feel secure in their position do not typically stage military provocations timed to coincide with diplomatic meetings. The drills read less like strength and more like a regime reminding its own domestic audience that it hasn't gone soft by agreeing to talk.
That internal dynamic matters. The IRGC and the diplomatic corps in Tehran are not always pulling in the same direction. The fact that Tangsiri was rehearsing a blockade while Iranian diplomats were negotiating in Geneva tells you something about the competing power centers inside the regime.
This is the second round of talks in Geneva. The first round's details remain thin, but the fact that both sides returned suggests neither has written off the process entirely. Iran wants sanctions relief. The Trump administration wants verifiable constraints on a nuclear program, an end to missile proliferation, and a regime that stops exporting violence across the Middle East.
Those are not easily reconcilable positions. But the alternative, a nuclear-armed Iran operating freely behind a wall of proxies, is not a position any serious person can accept.
The administration is doing two things simultaneously: engaging diplomatically and maintaining an overwhelming military presence in the region. That is not a contradiction. That is how you negotiate with a regime that fires missiles to make a point.
Iran lit up the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. The world noticed. So did the men sitting across from Iranian officials in Geneva, backed by the full weight of American power.