TEHRAN, Aug. 3 -- The gap between what Donald Trump described and what Tehran acknowledged on Sunday stretched across the essential question of who is negotiating with whom. Trump told reporters in Washington that he had called off strikes on Iran because of a pending settlement deal - one that, in his telling, would include the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and an agreement on Iran's nuclear program. Within hours, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei delivered a two-sentence correction, as Sputnik reported: "Talks between Iran and Oman are bilateral, and other parties have nothing to do with them."

That statement, attributed to Baghaei by the Fars news agency, was the most precise thing said publicly about the Muscat c...