Iran Ties Hormuz Reopening to U.S. Concessions as 60-Day Peace Deadline Expires

MUSCAT/DUBAI, Iran's foreign minister said his country is close to a navigation agreement with Oman over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows, but Tehran quickly signalled the deal alone won't restart traffic.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking on Saturday, said Iran is "very close" to settling the terms of a shipping corridor with Muscat, according to CNN's live coverage of the Iran war. But he added that the waterway's full reopening remains "subject to other conditions," including what he described as compensation from Washington for breaching a memorandum of understanding the two sides reached in June.

The timing is pointed. As reported by CBS News, Monday marked 60 days since the United States and Iran signed that memorandum, which obliged the parties to negotiate a wider peace deal within the window. The deadline passed without an agreement. According to CBS News, there are no concrete plans to end what is now a six-month conflict.

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to normal commercial traffic since late February, when the US and Israel launched military operations against Iran and Tehran ordered its Revolutionary Guard Corps to halt foreign shipping. As reported by Al Jazeera, the strait flows through the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman, giving Muscat an indispensable role in any corridor arrangement.

Oman has positioned itself throughout as the principal mediator. Its Foreign Ministry has described the negotiations with Tehran as "positive and constructive," a characterisation Araghchi has broadly matched on the Iranian side, according to CNN. But the two governments have publicly disagreed on at least one central point: whether Washington has any legitimate say in the route design. Iranian officials have insisted the discussions are exclusively bilateral. US officials have said they won't accept any arrangement that leaves Iran in control of who passes and who doesn't, according to Al Jazeera's reporting from Tehran.

Vice President JD Vance, speaking to Fox News as quoted by CNN, said Washington is seeking to "maximize the amount of oil and gas" coming out of the strait and expects any deal to restore pre-conflict volumes. He described the traffic scheme under discussion, one that would require Iran to commit to not firing on commercial vessels, as the "most focused" priority for the administration at present.

The human cost of the standoff has mounted sharply. According to Fortune, the International Maritime Organization counted some 65 confirmed incidents involving vessels in the strait and broader Middle East as of 11 August, with 17 seafarers killed. The UK Maritime Trade Operations unit reported a projectile striking a bulk carrier's hull over last weekend, and two Abu Dhabi National Oil Company vessels were hit while transiting Hormuz on consecutive days, according to UAE state news agency WAM, as cited by Fortune.

A separate and sharper diplomatic jolt came from Washington on Monday, when President Trump threatened to bomb Oman itself if Muscat "gets in the way" of US efforts to reopen the strait, according to CBS News. Asked by a reporter in the Oval Office whether he had lost patience with Oman, Trump said, "I don't think they behaved very well, but we'd handle them very easily." The threat lands awkwardly: Oman is the very country the US has been relying on to carry its messages to Tehran, and Iranian negotiators have explicitly told Al Jazeera that talks with Muscat are proceeding on the premise of no outside interference.

The earlier June memorandum had stipulated that Iran would keep the strait open for at least 60 days to allow broader peace talks, according to Al Jazeera. That arrangement broke down after Iran attacked ships that had taken an Oman-approved route the US had endorsed, the disagreement over corridor coordinates proving the first serious fault line.

For the Gulf states that depend on the waterway for export revenues and energy security, each fresh round of optimism followed by a new caveat has become its own form of attrition. Whether Muscat can hold the needle between Tehran's demand for respect of its sovereign terms and Washington's insistence on unfettered commercial passage remains the central diplomatic question of the conflict.

Sources cited:
- CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/08/world/live-news/iran-war-trump)
- CBS News (https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/us-iran-war-deal-expired-strait-of-hormuz/)
- Al Jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/6/hormuz-deal-close-whats-the-latest-on-each-sides-positions)
- Fortune (https://fortune.com/2026/08/15/iran-oman-hormuz-strait-deal-shipping-map-routes-attacks/)