US President Donald Trump said the United States was “in serious discussions with a new, more reasonable regime” to end military operations in Iran, the first public acknowledgment of regime change in Tehran since the conflict began five weeks ago.
Using the phrase “new regime,” his Truth Social article suggests the talks involve a leadership structure that was not in place when the war began in late February.
In the same message, Trump demanded that the Strait of Hormuz be “open for business immediately” and threatened to “blow up and completely destroy” Iranian power plants, oil wells and Kharg Island if a deal was not reached soon. He added that desalination plants were also being explored.
These are all targets that the United States deliberately avoided hitting for the duration of the five-week conflict, he said.
The combination of a potential ceasefire with a new government and the most explicit threat to civil and energy infrastructure makes this a double-sided stock that the market will struggle to properly price.
On the one hand, negotiations are taking place with a new regime and “great progress” has been made. On the other hand, the president just publicly listed all the critical infrastructure he is prepared to destroy if these talks fail, while claiming that such action would “end our beautiful ‘stay’ in Iran.”
Bitcoin surged above $67,600 on the news, taking its 24-hour gain to 1.3%. Ether (ETH) outperformed, up 3.1% to $2,070, solana (SOL) rose 1.9% to $84.09 and XRP added 1.0% to $1.35. The weekly chart is still uniformly red – with BTC down 1.3%, XRP down 1.2%, SOL down 2.2%. Tron continues to outperform, up 1.3% in 24 hours and 5.3% over the week.
The bounce squeezed a lot of shorts on the way up. Data from CoinGlass shows $9.32 million in short liquidations in the last hour alone, compared to just $207,000 in long positions.
Traders sold off $340 million in a 24-hour period, absorbing most of the $242.25 million surge from the night before the Trump message arrived. The largest order was a $9.8 million BTCUSD liquidation on Bybit.
