Iran And Oman Reach Preliminary Understanding On Hormuz Route
Iran and Oman have reached a preliminary understanding on the coordinates of a proposed shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, as Tehran seeks a formal role in managing vessel movements through a waterway it borders but does not control. An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said talks with Muscat had progressed and that a joint statement was being prepared.
The arrangement could give Iran greater control over ships entering the Gulf, according to an Iranian source and two regional officials, though the same sources said key details remain unresolved and pushed back against suggestions that a deal to fully reopen the waterway was imminent. That caution is a direct response to statements from Washington that the strait could reopen to traffic soon, and it reflects the experience of a ceasefire agreed in June that collapsed within weeks.
Commercial traffic through the strait has been reduced to a trickle since the end of February. During that period vessels effectively unable to leave the region have been struck by drones, causing damage to ships, injuries to seafarers and deaths. Tehran has said repeatedly that the strait will not simply revert to its previous status, and has proposed a tolling system for transits as part of whatever arrangement follows.
That proposal has produced an unusually unified response from the industry. In an open letter issued on 3 August, a group of organisations representing shipowners, cargo interests and operators across Europe and Asia warned that compulsory charges for passage through the strait would represent a major departure from established international practice. Their argument is that transit passage through straits used for international navigation is a right rather than a service, that charging for it would set a precedent weakening the legal framework governing every comparable waterway, and that the cost would flow through international supply chains. The International Maritime Organization has separately warned that transit fees in the strait would be unprecedented.
The legal question underneath is genuinely difficult. Iran is not a party to the convention that codifies transit passage, and it has consistently maintained that the regime does not bind it, while the states whose ships use the strait maintain that the right exists independently of any particular signature. That disagreement was academic while traffic flowed freely. It stops being academic the moment a coastal state with the physical ability to interfere begins negotiating routes and charges with its neighbour, and the industry's letter is an attempt to make the cost of establishing that precedent visible before anyone agrees to pay it.
