ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Saturday that Tehran and Muscat are close to finalizing a deal for a temporary shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) denied that the talks were linked to reopening the waterway, saying the reopening would depend on the US meeting a list of Tehran’s demands.
“Negotiations with Oman on the legal mechanism and management of the Strait of Hormuz, including the designation of a shipping route, are underway and we are very close to an agreement,” Araghchi said, as cited by the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
“For now, we are talking about a temporary route,” he said, noting that the previous shipping corridor opened by the US and Oman - in coordination with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) - in mid-June is “no longer acceptable to Iran.” He added that a new route needs to be established, though it involves “extensive technical and legal complexities.”
The foreign minister’s remarks come after Tehran and Muscat announced on Wednesday that their bilateral agreement on managing the Strait of Hormuz, which lies between the two countries, is nearing completion after both sides agreed on the geographical coordinates for the intended route.
Araghchi's remarks coincided with an IRGC attack on a vessel belonging to the UAE’s state-owned oil company, ADNOC, earlier on Saturday.
However, IRGC spokesperson Hossein Mohebbi said Saturday reopening the waterway is “completely independent” of the talks between Iran and Oman.
“For us, the Strait of Hormuz is not merely an economic waterway, but rather a key component of our geopolitical and strategic power,” Iranian state media cited Mohebbi as saying.
He also emphasized that the US “fully accepting Iran’s conditions and ceasing its interference in regional negotiations” are prerequisites for reopening the strait, claiming that Tehran has “formally established and communicated” these demands to Washington.
Separately, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said in a statement shared by IRNA that Tehran demands the US “permanently” end the war against Iran and its allies in “Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq.”
Zolghadr also called on Washington to lift the maritime blockade on Iranian ports imposed in late June, withdraw US “naval and air forces from around Iran, pay in full for damages caused by two imposed wars against Iran, and remove sanctions imposed on the Iranian people.”
“The Strait of Hormuz will not open until America corrects its behavior,” he added.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that Washington will act if negotiations falter. "The Strait is going to be open very soon - or they're gonna hit very hard, and then the Strait is going to be open," he told Fox News.
"We were going to do a tremendous attack, the biggest since World War II, and they called me and said, very politely, 'Please, can we talk? Can we talk?'... I said, 'Yes, we can talk. Let's get it done. Finally, let's get it done,'" Trump added.
Washington and Tehran engaged in a renewed round of tit-for-tat attacks between July 8 and July 24. The US focused primarily on striking military facilities in southern Iran to degrade its ability to target passing ships, while Tehran retaliated by targeting US bases across the region.
Hostilities halted following mediation efforts by Gulf states, which urged both sides to give diplomacy another chance.
The US and Iran previously engaged in direct military conflict which began in late February, before they reached a fragile ceasefire on April 8, followed by months of fluctuating clashes.
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