While Iranian regime officials announced progress in Iran-Oman negotiations over shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, August 8, they also set out new and extensive conditions for reopening the waterway.
Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz “will not be reopened until the United States corrects its behavior,” as he put it. He emphasized that the council would not back down from this position “whether in war or negotiations.”
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He set out six conditions for reopening the strait, including an end to the war and U.S. attacks on Iran and the Iranian regime’s allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq; an end to the naval blockade; the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from around Iran; full payment of war damages; the lifting of sanctions; and the release of Iran’s frozen assets. Zolghadr also called for an end to U.S. threats against Iran.
Hours earlier, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesperson had also said that reopening the Strait of Hormuz “has essentially nothing to do with the Iran-Oman negotiations” and would take place only if the United States fully accepts “Iran’s conditions.”
These positions were expressed as Iranian regime Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced the same day that Iran and Oman were nearing an agreement on the “legal mechanism and management of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Araghchi said Tehran and Muscat were “very close to an agreement” on determining shipping routes and were initially negotiating a temporary route that is intended to serve as the basis for the main route in the future.
According to him, the military and naval forces of the two countries have also discussed the route based on existing maps.
The Iranian regime’s foreign minister nevertheless stressed that an agreement with Oman would not in itself mean that the strait would be reopened, and that the matter depends on other conditions, including what Tehran calls “compensation for the violations of the Islamabad memorandum by the United States.”
These positions differ significantly from assessments by U.S. officials in recent days. A U.S. official told Reuters on Friday that the Iran-Oman negotiations had made progress and that Washington expected an agreement to be reached “soon” that would allow unobstructed commercial traffic to resume through the Strait of Hormuz. The official said that if such an agreement were implemented, the United States would also lift its blockade of Iranian ports.
It had previously been reported that the plan being negotiated by Iran and Oman includes establishing new shipping routes through the strait, an issue that over the past week has become one of the main focuses of diplomatic efforts to end the five-month crisis between Iran and the United States.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Saturday that Iran had promised Washington it would allow the flow of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz to return to prewar levels, but that the United States would not trust these commitments until they were implemented in practice.
He said the negotiations are focused on establishing a mechanism for the safe passage of ships, including Iran’s commitment not to attack commercial vessels and to clear mines. Vance also said Iranian regime officials had told the United States they did not intend to charge fees to passing ships.
