Iran and Oman Reach Understanding on New Hormuz Corridor, But Say the Strait Isn't Reopening
Iran and Oman have reached an understanding on the coordinates of a new, temporary shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, though officials in Tehran say this does not amount to reopening the strait. Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told IRNA on August 5 that three weeks of talks with Muscat had produced agreement on nearly every element under discussion, including the map of inbound and outbound routes, and that the two sides are now finalizing a joint statement. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said the same day that the geographic coordinates of the route both sides have in mind have been agreed, and that the joint statement could be released “if third parties do not interfere.”
The proposed arrangement closes both existing temporary routes and replaces them with a new corridor. According to Gharibabadi, the northern route near Larak Island and the southern route through Oman’s internal waters - both established as strictly temporary arrangements - will be closed. The new route runs largely through Iranian territorial waters on the inbound leg and partly through Iranian waters on parts of the outbound leg as well, with the remainder passing through Omani waters. In practice, this means both inbound and outbound traffic passes at least partly through Iranian territory, giving Tehran a sovereign hand over the corridor. Reuters, citing a senior Iranian official and two regional officials, reported the arrangement would give Iran control over vessels entering the Gulf, describing it as among the largest concessions extended to Tehran to date. A Rokna report citing Gharibabadi said the temporary route could remain in place for two to four months or longer, pending a second phase of talks toward a permanent arrangement.
Tehran and Muscat insist the deal is strictly bilateral and does not involve Washington. Gharibabadi said third-country involvement in the arrangements is not accepted. Iranian state broadcaster IRIB, citing an informed official, said the talks concern “purely Iranian-Omani” transit arrangements and that even with an Iran-Oman deal, the strait will not reopen unless the United States halts what Tehran calls its violations. On the other side, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week a deal to reopen Hormuz could be close, and President Trump has repeatedly called an agreement imminent, claims Iranian outlets have denied. Whether informal US-Iran contacts are occurring alongside the Iran-Oman track remains disputed and unverified.
Two Iranian officials made statements last week that are easy to conflate but address different things. Asked directly by Khabaronline whether a US return to its Islamabad MoU commitments would be the condition for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Gharibabadi said it would be a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. As Iran has faced what he called a “breach of commitment and violation of obligations” by the United States, that breach “ultimately has to be resolved somewhere.” It remains unclear whether this could take the form of a new formal commitment or some other form of assurance.
Gharibabadi’s emphasis, in other words, was less about the U.S. formally rejoining the MoU in name than about Tehran needing credible proof that Washington will actually implement steps this time, given the past track record of violations. Baghaei’s separate remark - that the Iran-Oman corridor deal “by itself” does not mean the strait has become secure - was about a narrower point: even a finalized bilateral understanding with Muscat cannot neutralize what Tehran calls the destabilizing factor - the U.S. naval blockade - which exists independently of anything Iran and Oman agree on.
The hardline paper Kayhan reported that Mojtaba Khamenei’s office permitted the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in June only on condition that Pezeshkian preserve Iran’s rights and those of the “resistance front,” and stating that the Leader’s office would be “waiting” to see those conditions fulfilled. Kayhan’s August 3 column attacked Pezeshkian for “continuing to insist” on implementing what it called a “torn-up” agreement, arguing that none of the conditions tied to his signature were met before Washington declared the MoU over. Gharibabadi, separately, has said Iran halted all of its own obligations under the MoU once the US did the same, and accused American forces of pressuring commercial vessels to shut off radar and navigation systems to force them onto the disputed southern route. Read together, this suggests Tehran’s bottleneck is less a refusal in principle to reengage with the MoU than the absence, in its view, of any mechanism to guarantee Washington won’t abandon it again.
Domestically, hardliners have mobilized against any arrangement touching Iranian waters, citing sovereignty. MP Hosseinali Haji-Deligani told Didban-e Iran that surrendering “a centimeter” of Iranian waters in any agreement would violate the constitution and would require approval by four-fifths of parliament. Moreover, he said a group of MPs is compiling documentation with an aim of impeaching Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. This follows an earlier statement from the presidium of the Assembly of Experts branding any talk of accommodation as treason. Still, the diplomatic track - run through the Foreign Ministry and the Supreme National Security Council - has so far retained control of the file.
Two competing and not necessarily contradictory explanations have circulated for why Trump called off the large-scale strike he had threatened against Iran last week. The first, reported by the Washington Post, CBS and CNN citing unnamed sources, holds that concern over dwindling stocks of precision munitions and air-defense interceptors - particularly Patriot and THAAD systems - factored into the decision. CNN’s report indicated that the US military has expended nearly 80 percent of its THAAD interceptor stockpile. Trump has called these reports “fake news” and threatened leakers with lengthy prison sentences;.
The second explanation, reported by AFP and Reuters citing informed sources, holds that Iran warned Gulf states it would strike US assets and regional energy infrastructure in retaliation for any renewed attack, and that if the US targeted Iran’s power grid, Tehran would “plunge the entire region into blackout.“ Backing up this threat, Iran reportedly shared a target list with regional governments. Araghchi, per the same reporting, asked Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Pakistan to press Trump to call off a new strike. Trump subsequently held a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, in which the Saudi head of state reportedly pressed the President to hold off on this escalation.
Alongside the Hormuz standoff, a separate maritime war between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia continues to squeeze another global energy chokepoint. The Houthis declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia on July 22 and, according to military spokesman Yahya Saree, have since struck at least nine Saudi tankers, including the Wafa and Daisy near Yanbu and the Gulf of Aden. According to India’s shipping minister, an Indian-flagged cargo vessel sank off Yemen’s coast after being struck by a drone, with all 14 crew rescued before it sank. The maritime intelligence firm Windward reported that over the same period, 22 China-linked vessels transited Bab al-Mandeb and berthed at Saudi ports without incident, a pattern the firm described as an apparent exemption for Chinese-flagged shipping. Kpler analyst Matthew Wright said the threat to crude shipping in the region is now at its worst point since the crisis began, with Kpler data showing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz falling from more than 100 vessels a day before the war to fewer than ten a day now. Saudi Arabia has leaned on its East-West pipeline and Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea for exports, though that route is now threatened by a partial Houthi blockade.
This week’s immediate outcome is not a reopened Hormuz but a pending negotiated corridor. Even if the joint Iran-Oman statement is released as planned, the larger questions - the fate of the US naval blockade, the nuclear file, Israel’s Lebanon obligations under the Islamabad MoU, and Iran’s frozen assets - remain, by Tehran’s own account, deferred to a later and undefined stage, contingent on assurances neither side has yet found a way to make credible to the other. Until then, the cost of the standoff falls on those with no say in it: the crews navigating two contested waterways, the residents of southern Iran who have absorbed the heaviest strikes, and global energy markets that shed or gain billions in value with every shift in optimism or pessimism about Hormuz.