The U.S. and Iran were at odds on Tuesday over whether Tehran had agreed to allow U.N. inspections of its nuclear sites. As officials negotiated over how to permanently end the war in Iran, a separate plan emerged to break the shipping bottleneck through the Strait of Hormuz.

The disagreement over nuclear inspections came as Iran’s president met with Pakistani mediators and technical teams from the U.S. and Iran continued talks in Switzerland.

A United Nations agency said Tuesday that a plan was underway to move stranded ships and their thousands of crew members through the strait — a vital passage for global energy supplies that Iran had blocked after the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.

Earlier in the day, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, told reporters in Tehran that U.N. inspectors were not scheduled to examine nuclear sites bombed by the U.S. last year, rejecting comments made a day before by Vice President JD Vance.

President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that if Iran had not agreed to inspections, he would cut off talks with Tehran immediately.

But he added there was no rush for those inspections to begin.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has not responded to requests for comment over its possible role. It has been in and out of Iran since Israel’s 12-day war in 2025, but has not been granted access to bombed enrichment sites targeted by the U.S.

Iran’s maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, though it has highly enriched uranium that could be used to build atomic bombs, should it choose to do so, the IAEA has said.

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