Oman Calls Off Salalah Conference on a New Strait of Hormuz Transit Corridor

Oman has cancelled the regional conference it had called for Monday in Salalah, to which every Gulf Cooperation Council member plus Iraq had been invited. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the business of the meeting was to have been the joint presentation of a new maritime transit corridor in the Strait of Hormuz, over which Oman and Iran have reached a draft agreement.

The two states have been negotiating for months over future arrangements for navigation in the strait, and the gap between them has been a matter of principle rather than detail. Oman has insisted on retaining freedom of navigation and the right of innocent passage as provided for in the arrangement endorsed by the IMO and in place since 1968. Iran has held out for the right to charge passage fees and to vet the traffic using the strait.

In the run-up to the meeting, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq and Omani foreign minister Sayyid Badr Al Busaidi had been keeping fellow GCC members informed of progress, and had privately expressed confidence that the proposals met with approval in Washington. Separately from the technical arrangements inside the strait, Iran is reported to have set out seven preconditions that the United States would have had to meet before any agreement could enter into force, based on its reading of the 17 June US-Iranian memorandum of understanding.

Those preconditions, rather than the navigation terms Oman had negotiated, appear to account for most of the reservations held by the other Gulf states. Bahrain made clear it would not attend if Iranian representatives were present, having been attacked with ballistic missiles and drones. Bahrain normally aligns closely with Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh is understood to have objected to some of the technical arrangements proposed for the new transit plan. The United Arab Emirates has not announced a refusal to attend.

What the cancellation exposes is a divergence of aims. The United States has been pursuing an end to the war coupled with some restoration of controls over Iran's nuclear programme. The Gulf states are dealing with something closer to home: strikes on their infrastructure, and restrictions on the trade flows their economies run on. Their absence from Salalah indicates a preference for building alternatives to the current restrictions on the strait rather than accepting a permanent arrangement negotiated under them.

For masters and operators working the strait, nothing changes in the near term. Transit conditions remain governed by the pattern of attacks and by the naval blockade rather than by any published corridor, and the fee-and-vetting question that separates Muscat from Tehran remains open.

This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 16 September 2026.