Oil prices sank on Tuesday after President Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo struck a softer tone on Iran. The market acted swiftly, selling off crude oil.
The comments come a day after Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif spoke with NBC News,
The lengthy interview and rather accommodating tone from Zarif appeared to succeed in softening up the Trump administration. President Trump said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the U.S. was “not looking for regime change,” although he added that he did “want them out of Yemen.”
“They’d like to talk, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said.
Following those comments, Sec. Pompeo said that “for the first time” Iran was “ready to negotiate on their missile program.”
Oil prices plunged by 4 percent on Tuesday after Trump and Pompeo seemed to lay the groundwork for de-escalation. There are no formal next steps that the two countries might take, but the positive back-and-forth is long way from where they were a few weeks ago, on the eve of a U.S. military strike.