No phone call, no message. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Donald Trump has had zero contact with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since Trump's most recent social media post referencing the kingdom, according to FirstSquawk. The silence stands out given how central MBS has been to any potential diplomatic architecture around the U.S.-Iran standoff.
Trump, speaking to Axios, said Iran is open to some form of dialogue but isn't ready to close a deal. That tracks with where prediction markets currently sit: odds of a U.S.-Iran peace agreement before July 31 are priced at just 5.5% YES, down from recent highs. A U.S. missile strike on Iran's Qeshm Island earlier this week did nothing to help those odds, and the gap between "open to talks" and "ready to sign" appears wide.
Saudi Arabia has historically served as a back-channel in Washington's dealings with Tehran, which makes the Trump-MBS communication gap more than a diplomatic footnote. Whether the lapse is tactical, a sign of friction, or simply a matter of timing, nobody in the administration is clarifying.
Adding another layer of complexity, the U.S. Trade Representative is set to announce new tariffs later today. Fresh trade measures tend to ripple through Gulf economies that peg policy closely to U.S. signals, and the timing alongside stalled Iran diplomacy gives foreign ministries in the region plenty to parse.
For now, the picture is a president who says Iran is talking but won't deal, a crown prince he hasn't called, and a tariff announcement dropping into an already crowded geopolitical moment.
