Two Chinese oil tankers have left the Strait of Hormuz after waiting in the Gulf for more than two months, as the United States president claims a deal to end the US-Israel war on Iran is imminent and Iran threatens that any new attacks would lead to spillover beyond the region.

Shipping data from LSEG and Kpler showed that the two supertankers – Chinese-flagged Yuan Gui Yang and Hong Kong-flagged Ocean Lily – navigated out of the waterway, carrying about 4 million barrels of crude.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, meanwhile, told a parliamentary hearing in Seoul that a Korean crude vessel was also passing through the Strait on Wednesday.

Yuan Gui Yang loaded 2 million barrels of Iraqi Basrah crude on February 27, a day before the US-Israel war on Iran started, while Ocean Lily loaded 1 million barrels each of Qatari al-Shaheen and Iraqi Basrah crude between late February and early March, data showed.

Their exit from the strait came as Trump told US lawmakers the war on Iran will end “very quickly” and “hopefully … in a very nice manner”.

US Vice President JD Vance said at a White House news briefing that Tehran-Washington negotiations are “in a pretty good spot here”.

“There’s a lot of back-and-forth, a lot of good progress is being made, but we’re just going to keep on working at it,” Vance said.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), however, suggested that Iran would hit targets outside the Middle East if the US and Israel resumed their attacks.

“If aggression against Iran is repeated, the promised regional war will extend beyond the region this time,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.