Iran has announced plans to join a regional foreign ministers’ meeting in Oman as renewed attacks on shipping and reports of damage to American aircraft play out alongside a debate inside Iran over whether or not to seek to end the war. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Iran would participate on Monday, September 14, in talks involving countries bordering the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. He described the meeting as an opportunity to build regional trust and cooperation, and said it would address Iranian-Omani discussions on safe commercial navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. The Financial Times, citing two informed sources, identified the venue as Salalah and reported that Oman and Iran were seeking regional support for a temporary shipping arrangement.
Tehran says it has reached an understanding with Oman on a map of shipping routes and is negotiating a joint statement. It blames U.S. military intervention and the naval blockade for delaying that announcement. Agreement between Iran and Oman would be a diplomatic step, but would still require wider cooperation to make passage dependable.
Pakistani mediation is also continuing. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke with Pakistan’s military chief Asim Munir on September 10. Iran’s account emphasized regional insecurity; a Pakistani security official told Reuters that reducing tensions across all fronts and restarting negotiations were central to the call. Fighting between the Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-backed government was also discussed.
These contacts follow a substantial escalation late on September 8, when U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it struck and incapacitated five Iranian tankers after Iranian ballistic missiles were intercepted before they could strike an American warship. It identified four vessels in the Gulf of Oman and another near Kharg Island, and said crews had been warned to evacuate. CENTCOM said the targeted American warship had evaded the attacks without injury to its personnel.
Iran retaliated against Muwaffaq Salti Air Base near Azraq, Jordan, claiming hits on aircraft facilities and hangars. Jordanian authorities said they intercepted 18 of 20 missiles and initially reported no casualties.
Subsequent reporting indicates that the absence of reported deaths did not mean the base escaped damage. CBS News, citing people with direct knowledge, reported that roughly eight F-15 aircraft sustained light damage and returned to service after repairs, while an A-10 attack aircraft lost a wing. It reported no American deaths and said U.S. forces fired more than 30 Patriot interceptors during the attack.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) separately claimed attacks on two American vessels, eight tankers and ten additional ships it described as violating its navigation restrictions. CENTCOM denied that American ships had been hit. The reported aircraft damage in Jordan does not substantiate the separate Iranian claims about warships or every commercial vessel listed in its statements.
Civilian shipping losses are clearer. A September 9 attack on the tanker Hercules Star reportedly killed one crew member, injured another and left another missing. A United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) warning that day also recorded a tanker struck by an unidentified projectile 28 nautical miles southeast of Al-Faw, Iraq; its crew was reported safe, with no environmental impact reported at the time.
On September 10, UKMTO recorded another incident near Khasab, Oman: a ship’s master saw four projectiles strike two vessels, setting one ablaze. The warning did not identify the attacker. Attacks on merchant shipping therefore continued into September 10, although responsibility for these particular strikes was not established by the warning.
Iran also announced a strike on an American Saildrone unmanned surface vessel, hull number 5838. This was separate from the underwater vehicle it had captured and displayed earlier in the week. CENTCOM subsequently acknowledged that a U.S. underwater drone had malfunctioned more than a day before its recovery, describing it as an older model without classified sensors or sensitive intelligence. That account disputed Tehran’s presentation of the capture as an operational and technological success.
As of September 11, no further U.S. strikes on Iranian tankers had been publicly announced after the September 8 operation. Iran continued to assert control over Hormuz, and merchant shipping remained under attack. Whether Washington will continue its tanker-for-ship retaliation policy - and whether attacks on commercial shipping will trigger it alongside attacks on U.S. naval vessels - remains an immediate test of the confrontation.
Traffic figures show continuing constraints on navigation. Preliminary Kpler data reported by Reuters recorded seven Hormuz transits on September 10, down from eleven the previous day and a ten-day average of fifteen. The tally excluded vessels potentially traveling with their automatic identification system transponders switched off.
The continued gains from Houthi forces along Yemen’s western coast near the Bab El-Mandeb Strait intensified economic blowback and rattled perceptions of increasing American leverage. Likewise, reports indicate that drones struck on Saudi Arabia’s vital East-West pipeline, with reports Friday indicating that extensive fires were caused by an explosion at a pumping station along the corridor. The damage is at least temporarily disrupting the kingdom’s bypass to the Strait of Hormuz. It remains unclear where the attack originated from, with both militias in Iraq and Houthi forces capable of executing the strike.
Inside Iran, the debate increasingly concerns what an agreement should achieve and whether pursuing it weakens the country’s bargaining position. On September 10, Former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif proposed a framework in the German publication Zenith: a multinational enrichment consortium involving Iran, interested Gulf states and international partners that would link nuclear cooperation to regional security. However, conservative critics have argued that concessions would surrender leverage without ending foreign hostility.
Zarif argued that demands for zero enrichment would prolong the impasse and proposed shared facilities, potentially in Iran and elsewhere in the region, with joint participation and oversight. Zarif linked that arrangement to institutionalized regional dialogue, nonaggression commitments and maritime security that permits Iran to benefit from trade. His proposal is not an announced government negotiating position. Nevertheless, the planned Oman meeting gives practical relevance to his argument that nuclear and maritime disputes cannot be resolved independently of the region’s broader security relationships.
Former President Hassan Rouhani has made a more direct case for an honorable end to the war. In remarks published earlier in September and debated in Iranian media this week, he emphasized reconstruction, investment and restoring young people’s confidence in their future. He challenged the idea that a vocal minority with powerful media platforms represented the population as a whole.
Rouhani also argued that the Strait of Hormuz should support commercial prosperity as well as Iranian and Omani security, questioning the value of a strait without shipping. While he suggested that Iran should maintain the option for closure amid an impasse, conservative commentary accused him of offering to relinquish Iran’s strongest bargaining asset.
Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Ghalibaf, questioned the motives behind renewed calls for compromise. Referring to former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Rouhani, alongside unnamed clerics, he characterized their message as an argument that people were exhausted by war and Iran should make the concessions necessary to end it. He disputed the assumptions that concessions would secure peace and that the population would no longer sustain an uncompromising course.
Mohammadi suggested that these interventions could serve an enemy effort to sow domestic division, even without the speakers’ awareness. He offered no evidence of coordination in the remarks. His criticism brings the argument over compromise into Ghalibaf’s own circle and shows how advocacy of a settlement can become a question of political loyalty.
Negotiation also has defenders within the conservative establishment. A September 8 Roozno article defended Rouhani’s right to speak and criticized efforts to restrict debate to one political tendency. In an August 26 response to Kayhan editor Hossein Shariatmadari, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf rejected treating diplomacy as taboo. He described negotiations as a way to advance national interests and consolidate resistance, criticizing those who avoided responsibility for talks while preparing to brand their results a betrayal. Ghalibaf nevertheless continues to describe negotiation as a method of struggle, leaving room for a settlement within the political language of resistance.
A more uncompromising argument came from Mashhad Friday prayer leader Ahmad Alamolhoda on September 11. He blamed the current war on concessions under the 2015 nuclear agreement, claiming that accommodating Western demands had failed to end hostility. He said Iran must defend itself even if its enemy fought for “200,000 years,” and advocated offensive defense intended to maintain superior firepower.
His remarks framed continued fighting as a response to aggression. They nonetheless challenged the expectation that compromise could deliver security. Where Zarif presents reciprocal diplomacy as an approach undermined by renewed coercion, Alamolhoda treats past accommodation as evidence against negotiations moving forward.
The immediate diplomatic obstacle is not exclusively inside Iran. On September 9, President Donald Trump predicted the war would end after the U.S. midterm elections and said Washington was not actively seeking negotiations. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has also threatened severe strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure if Iran attacked Israel.
The new regional meeting and Pakistani contacts create an opening, not an announced settlement. These exchanges establish neither a consensus within the government nor the balance of public opinion. They show that competing routes out of the war remain openly contested. The test for the Oman initiative will be whether discussions can produce reciprocal steps on shipping and economic restrictions that also disincentivize additional military strikes.