CNBC Daily Open: Trump's Iran deal is 'days away' — yet again
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was "rising very meaningfully," although he did not provide specific data.
Aliver
A ship remains anchored on May 16, 2026 in the Strait of Hormuz near Larak Island, Iran. Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over opening this critical waterway have largely stalled as the countries have rejected each other's proposals to end the war that began when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
Majid Saeedi | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC's Daily Open.
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump saying that a peace deal with Iran could be "days away," U.S. actions in the Middle East indicate that a resolution to the conflict is nowhere close.
Once again testing the limits of the word "ceasefire," Washington on Tuesday launched strikes against Iran in retaliation to Tehran downing its Apache attack helicopter.
On the tech front, Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, a powerful Mythos-class AI model that will be available to its enterprise customers and paid subscribers, while SpaceX gears up for its anticipated trillion-dollar IPO.
What you need to know today
The situation in the Middle East is twisting the meaning of "ceasefire" to such an extent that it puts to shame the bodily contortions of an enthusiastic yoga practitioner.
On Tuesday stateside, Washington conducted strikes on Iran at Trump's direction, which the U.S. Central Command described were "in response to yesterday's downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter."
The strikes come even as Trump earlier said that a deal to end the war in Iran could be reached in "two or three days."
Oil prices rose early Tuesday Asia time after falling during U.S. trading hours, with U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures up 1.8% at $89.79 per barrel, while futures for International benchmark Brent rose 1.8% to $93.06.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was "rising very meaningfully," although he did not provide data on the rise in oil flows through Hormuz strait.
Market mostly faltered, with the the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite dropping as chip stocks pulled back. The only outlier was the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which rose 0.17%. Asia markets were broadly lower in Wednesday trading.
Developments in the AI sphere, meanwhile, continue to be in focus: Anthropic announced Claude Fable 5, a Mythos-class AI model that will be available to its enterprise customers and paid subscribers.
That comes two months after the release of its Mythos AI, whose access was restricted by the company over concerns about the model's potential to do damage if it fell into the wrong hands.
Also in the tech space, Elon Musk's SpaceX is offering a take-it-or-leave-it IPO price of $135 per share, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion.
— Lim Hui Jie
