US President Donald Trump vowed today to have the Strait of Hormuz open “with or without” Iran’s co-operation, and said his top priority in peace talks was to ensure Tehran can’t have a nuclear weapon.

Trump has dispatched Vice-President JD Vance to Pakistan to meet with top Iranian officials in a bid to reach a peace deal after a two-week ceasefire that was agreed on Tuesday.

“We’re going to open up the Gulf with or without them…or the strait as they call it. I think it’s going to go pretty quickly, and if it doesn’t, we’ll be able to finish it off,” Trump told reporters as he left Washington on Saturday for a domestic trip.

“We will have that open fairly soon.”

The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s crude passes, will loom large in the peace talks in Islamabad.

But when asked what a good deal would look like, Trump said: “No nuclear weapon. That’s 99% of it.”