Iran has set preconditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, including compensation for war damages, complicating a deal on a waterway central to the world economy (Geo News).
Tehran has maintained an effective blockade since the United States and Israel struck Iran in late February, wants to charge tolls for passage, and has attacked ships it accuses of circumventing its preferred route. Continued attacks led to the collapse of an April ceasefire, and mediators have since pressed both sides to return to the terms of a June memorandum.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said discussions with Oman over transit and management of the strait were “approaching the final stages”, but that reopening “is subject to other conditions and compensation for the violation” of the June agreement.
Security chief Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr set out the fuller list on Saturday: an end to the “war and aggression against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq”, the lifting of a parallel US naval blockade of Iran, an end to sanctions, the release of frozen assets, and compensation for wartime damage, according to remarks reported by Tasnim.
The Revolutionary Guards took a harder line still, saying the reopening had “nothing to do with the negotiations between Iran and Oman” and that the “enemy is forced to accept Iran’s conditions”.
Those positions are not obviously compatible with the framework already agreed. The previous Iran-US deal envisaged Iran and Oman working out arrangements in consultation with other Gulf states and “in line with the applicable international law” — and international law generally forbids tolling in such waterways.
The attacks have continued through the negotiations. The UAE foreign ministry condemned what it called a “hostile Iranian attack that targeted a tanker belonging to Adnoc with a missile while it was transiting the Strait of Hormuz”, without casualties. The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency later reported a ship struck by a projectile off Oman in the strait, causing a fire that was extinguished, also without casualties; it was not clear whether the two reports referred to the same vessel. Adnoc said on Friday that 15 of its vessels had been attacked since the war began, three of them in that week alone.
Oman’s foreign ministry condemned “repeated attacks on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz” without naming Iran, and said negotiations on navigation arrangements were proceeding “in a positive and constructive atmosphere”, urging against actions that might jeopardise progress.
For Pakistan the stakes are direct. The bulk of the country’s crude and much of its LNG transits the Gulf, and the price of both has moved on each turn of these talks — with gold in Karachi rising Rs12,500 a tola over the weekend as the escalation resumed.
