Iran has suggested it could reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the U.S. eases military pressure and lifts its blockade on Iranian ports, according to media reports.

The prospect of renewed diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran comes after nearly seven months of war in the Middle East, with the Trump administration threatening to ramp up its economic pressure campaign against Tehran in recent days.

Reports from Reuters and Japan’s Kyodo news agency, which both cited an unnamed senior Iranian government official, said Tehran had laid out the necessary conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. CNBC could not independently verify the reports.

A senior Iranian government official told MS Now, CNBC’s Versant Media partner, that Reuters and Kyodo’s reports were not true.

The war has severely disrupted shipping through the strait, a narrow waterway that typically handles around 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, sending shock waves through the global economy.

U.S. stock index futures traded mixed on the news, while oil prices reversed earlier gains.

International benchmark Brent crude

The reports came just before U.S. President Donald Trump is due to address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, amid mounting domestic pressure over his decision to launch a war against Iran, a conflict that has rattled the global economy.

Earlier in the week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to “shut down” all Iranian airlines from as soon as Wednesday.

Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, Bessent said: “How do we do that? That if they land, you cannot provide them with fuel. You cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system.”

The Treasury secretary said that Washington was pressuring Iran “like never before,” saying that the U.S. was putting a stop to Iran’s “enablers” around the world, such as sanctioning banks.

Last week, the Treasury announced new sanctions on Russia’s state-controlled VTB Bank as part of its effort to economically isolate Iran by targeting its business partners and other financial enablers.

G7 condemns Houthi strikes

Separately, the G7 group of nations has called for an end to attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels against Yemen and Saudi Arabia on Monday stateside, condemning the “unacceptable continued strikes” by the group.

The bloc also called on the Houthis to cease all military actions, attacks against civilian shipping and for Iran to end its support for the rebel group.

The Houthis reportedly said they attacked “sensitive” sites in the Saudi capital Riyadh on the weekend, with fire and smoke seen near the city’s airport.

Houthi rebels also recently seized Yemen’s Perim Island on the Red Sea, tightening their grip on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which puts Iran and its proxies on course to exercise control over two critically important oil choke points: that and the Strait of Hormuz.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is an important alternative for oil exports to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, especially for Saudi Arabia, whose East-West pipeline allows the kingdom to divert some crude flows to be exported from the Red Sea.

The G7 statement comes after the U.K. reportedly said it will support Saudi Arabia against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, with the Royal Air Force providing air-to-air refueling of Saudi planes.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham told reporters that the arrangement will be for a matter of weeks, and will be kept under review.

The move comes as Trump refused Riyadh’s request for help against the rebels on the weekend, reportedly canceling a planned airstrike.

Burnham said he was “acting to secure the interests of Britain and the wider region, because of course Saudi Arabia has been experiencing attack, is looking at potential further disruption, and we need to keep those pathways (for oil) open,” according to The Associated Press.

Last week, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte signaled that European nations could also provide support to Saudi Arabia, telling a BBC interview that “I would not be surprised if some phone calls were taking place between European allies — ‘hey, how are we going to deal with this?’”

Correction: Mark Rutte is secretary-general of NATO. An earlier version misstated his title.

World leaders gathered in New York this week for the annual United Nations General Assembly, with discussions covering the U.S.-Iran war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Gaza’s fragile ceasefire and the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Nearly 130 presidents and prime ministers began addressing the assembly on Tuesday, including U.S. President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Also in attendance were Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Visiting delegations brought motorcades, street closures and extensive security operations that snarled traffic across midtown Manhattan. At UN headquarters, delegates face a week of consecutive speeches and side meetings as the already-stressed international order reaches a critical juncture.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping will not attend the assembly, instead traveling to Washington for a high-level summit with Trump on Wednesday. Leaders from India and Russia are also absent.

Speaking to world leaders on Tuesday, Trump said he must make a “big decision”: reach an agreement with Iran or “annihilate” the Islamic Republic. He later told reporters that U.S. officials had held a “very good” three-hour meeting with Iranian representatives on the sidelines, renewing cautious hopes for a diplomatic path out of the seven-month war.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung unveiled a three-part strategy for “peaceful coexistence” with North Korea. The proposal urges Pyongyang to “first halt the advancement” of its nuclear program before beginning to reduce it.

Brazil’s Lula delivered the opening speech, following his country’s tradition of speaking first. “Brazilian democracy belongs to Brazilians,” he said. “Brazil is nobody’s backyard.” He argued that the UN “is failing in one of its highest missions: to save humanity from the scourge of war.”

Trump also signed a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland expanding U.S. military access in Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

Trump then met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for approximately 40 minutes. He urged a Russia-Ukraine energy truce and supported a ban on U.S. diesel exports as fuel prices reached record levels ahead of the midterms.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivered his address to the UN, stating, “There can be no peace without justice.” Following his meeting with Trump, he promised to advocate for a halt to attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Gaza as “the most inhumane, most shameful concentration camp of our time,” leading Israel’s delegation to leave the chamber. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to address the assembly by video after being refused a U.S. visa.

MS NOW, CNN and Politico sued President Donald Trump on Monday morning in Washington, D.C., federal court, seeking to reverse his total ban on those three media outlets from the White House.

Journalists from the outlets were prevented from entering the White House on Saturday and had their credentials taken away, a day after Trump announced he would bar them from working there.

Judge Timothy Kelly later Monday ordered the Department of Justice to respond to the outlets’ request for a temporary restraining order against the ban by Tuesday.

Kelly scheduled a videoconference hearing on the outlets’ request for 3:30 p.m. ET Wednesday. The judge was nominated by Trump to the federal bench in 2017.

“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit says, arguing that the ban has already “severely impeded the ability of” the three outlets to cover Trump and his administration.

“Presidents from the earliest days of the Republic have disagreed with and complained about the tenor and content of press coverage of their administrations,” notes the civil complaint.

But “the Constitution protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public,” the suit says.

“No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim — with no notice, no process, and no warning — as the President did here.”

Trump, in announcing the ban in a Truth Social post Friday, accused the outlets of writing fiction and lies about him, and warned, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.” The president cited what he called “cumulative stories” by the three news organizations, adding, “You get sick of it.”

On Monday morning, after the lawsuit was announced, Trump in a Truth Social post said, “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish.”

“It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America,” Trump wrote. “It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control.”

“It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!” he said. Trump had not previously cited national security in justifying the ban. The president gave no examples to back up his claim.

The suit alleges the ban violates the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution by failing to give the outlets advance notice and an opportunity to challenge it, without establishing clear standards for Trump’s decision.

The complaint also says the ban violates the Constitution’s First Amendment by retaliating “against protected newsgathering and speech.”

And it says the ban violates the First Amendment for a separate reason: It bars the three media outlets “from a nonpublic forum for unlawful reasons.” Those reasons include so-called viewpoint discrimination, or targeting the outlets for their perceived “motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective.”

In a joint statement Monday, the three outlets said, “This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”

“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” the statement said. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

Theodore Boutrous Jr., the attorney for the three outlets, said in a statement, “The law is on our side across the board, and we look forward to presenting our arguments to the court as soon as possible.

The White House, in a statement later Monday, said Trump removed the three outlets “from the White House grounds after years of false reporting.”

“The First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle them to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool,” the White House said. “Access changes are nothing new. What is new, however, is the sudden claim that it becomes sacred only when the outlets are friendly to the Radical Left. The rule was never ‘every outlet gets in.’ It was always ‘our side stays in.’”

Kelly, the judge, in November 2018 ordered the White House to restore the press pass of then-CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, which the White House revoked after the journalist had a contentious exchange with Trump earlier that month. CNN sued Trump to get Acosta’s credentials restored.

Trump referenced Kelly by name, and mentioned his ruling on Acosta, in a Truth Social post later Monday that suggested the president believes the judge will ruling against him in the new lawsuit.

“The Judge’s name is Tim Kelly, and he was, sadly, appointed by “TRUMP,” the president wrote.

“In other words, almost without question and, as usual, we’ll go for appeal because Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.”

In addition to Trump, the defendants named in the complaint include Steven Cheung, his assistant for communications, White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, and Sean Curran, director of the U.S. Secret Service.

The named plaintiffs are the three outlets and three White House reporters: Akayla Gardner of MS NOW, Betsy Klein of CNN, and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett. The three journalists were denied entry to the White House on Saturday and their hard passes were taken away by a Secret Service officer there, the suit says.

On Sunday night, the White House removed CNN from its scheduled rotation as the pool television network for the White House travel pool. The pool was set to travel Monday with Trump for his visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

The lawsuit cites the White House’s removal of CNN from Monday’s pool schedule as an example of the ban “causing irreparable harm to” the outlets.

After the suit was announced Monday, members of the White House television press pool decided not to cover Trump ahead of his trip or in New York because of the action targeting CNN.

The suit is being filed in the same court where The Associated Press has a pending lawsuit against the White House for a ban on that wire service’s journalists working in certain restricted spaces in the White House, including the Oval Office and on Air Force One. The White House’s partial ban on the AP came in February 2025 after the wire service refused to reflect Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” in how it routinely refers to that international body of water.

Trump told reporters Friday that the latest ban is worth implementing, even if it is overturned by a judge.

“I think it’s good to point it out, whether it survives or doesn’t,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, during an interview Monday morning in New York with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said, “I don’t know much about it,” when asked his opinion of the ban.

But Bessent also suggested the ban was justified, saying “legacy media” is unpopular with the public “because of the perceived bias.”

Asked by CNBC’s Joe Kernen about a possible “off-ramp” from the ban, Bessent said, “We’ll see. Maybe it’s a change in coverage at the White House.”

Bessent also said, “The one thing I’m sure of: The press cares more about the press than anything else,” claiming news media focused more on the personal experiences of journalists at the aborted White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April than a gunman’s would-be assassination of Trump.

“One thing I’m sure is that this [ban] will be covered by the press,” Bessent said. “And, you know, I think we could get back to something that is a little more, I can’t even remember which network it is, fair and balanced.”

Fox News, a media outlet that is often criticized as being biased toward Trump and his administration, previously used the slogan “Fair and Balanced,” before discontinuing its use about a decade ago.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement Monday, said, “We’re glad to see that these news organizations are suing.”

“The president’s decision to bar them from the White House for the content of their reporting is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment,” Jaffer said. “It’s an attack both on press freedom and the public’s right to independent information about the government. We will support these news organizations in court.”

White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich, in a statement Saturday, said, “The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably.”

“That’s why courts have repeatedly held that once the White House provides access to journalists, it cannot deny that access arbitrarily or based on the content of their reporting,” said Heinrich, a Fox News correspondent.

In the AP’s lawsuit, Judge Trevor McFadden ruled in April 2025 that Trump’s partial ban of the agency’s journalists violated the First Amendment and ordered that the AP be given the same access as other members of the presidential press pool to the Oval Office, other restricted areas of the White House and Air Force One.

“The Court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints,” wrote McFadden, who was appointed to the federal bench by Trump.

“The Constitution requires no less,” the judge said.

Rather than allowing the AP access to places the White House press pool goes to cover the president, the White House said it would abolish the so-called wire pool, which included the AP, Bloomberg and Reuters. The wire pool for decades had traveled with presidents to bring news coverage to news consumers around the world. It has not been reinstated.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a 2-1 vote in June 2025, blocked McFadden’s ruling from taking effect while Trump appealed it.

The panel heard oral arguments in the appeal in November but has not issued a decision.

Disclosure: CNBC and MS NOW are divisions of Versant Media.