Oman Signals Progress on Joint Hormuz Shipping Corridor With Iran

Oman's foreign minister said on Tuesday that negotiations with Iran over the joint management of a Strait of Hormuz shipping corridor were advancing, describing his talks in Tehran as constructive.

Minister Badr Albusaidi said he had held what he called "constructive dialogue" with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi. The two governments are close to agreement on a single temporary shipping corridor that would replace the two-corridor arrangement currently in force, and Albusaidi indicated both sides would shortly announce a system intended to restore safe navigation through the waterway.

The longer-term ambition described by the Omani side is a permanent control arrangement drawing in other regional stakeholders, rather than a bilateral understanding between Muscat and Tehran alone.

The sticking point is money. An earlier Omani proposal included service fees on transiting traffic, a demand pressed by Iran that drew strong opposition from the United States and from international shipping interests. Two Middle Eastern officials have said that President Trump threatened military action against Oman last week in response to the proposal.

Tehran has since moved the fee question onto its own statute book. The foreign policy committee of Iran's parliament advanced domestic regulations to charge transit fees, with spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi describing them as covering navigation, environmental, insurance and safety services. That leaves the corridor negotiation and the fee mechanism running on parallel tracks, and gives Washington a second objection to press even if the lane arrangement is settled.

Diplomatic movement has not translated into safety on the water. An oil tanker was struck and disabled overnight on Monday in Omani waters, the latest in a run of attacks on merchant shipping in and around the strait. US Central Command operates a transit corridor that has escorted dozens of tanker passages in recent weeks, and current estimates put the volume of crude moving daily beyond the reach of Iranian interdiction at between four and six million barrels.

For owners weighing a Gulf fixture, the shape of the eventual corridor matters less than whether it comes with an enforceable guarantee. A single lane under joint management would simplify routing and remove the ambiguity that has left masters choosing between two sets of instructions, but it would not by itself change the war risk cover now priced into every voyage into and out of the Arabian Gulf.