What the Iran-Oman deal could mean for Strait of Hormuz fight
The Hill · C · trust 57/100
Comments: by Ellen Mitchell and Mallory Wilson - 08/06/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Ellen Mitchell and Mallory Wilson - 08/06/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied An emerging deal between Iran and Oman could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and give the countries joint control over its traffic, a major concession to Tehran.
The proposed plan, details of which are still being worked out, would reportedly give Tehran control of ships entering the Gulf through the strait. Who ultimately controls the outbound traffic and what role Iran has in it is still to be determined. The two reportedly agreed Wednesday on a new route for ships to transit the strait.
If agreed to, the deal would fly in the face of repeated assertions by Trump administration officials that Iran cannot control access to the vital shipping lane. But President Trump, seeking an offramp to a deeply unpopular conflict that is in its sixth month, appears anxious to use momentum from Iran-Oman talks to advance negotiations with Tehran on a broader nuclear deal.
An agreement in which Iran can control access to the strait also indicates the U.S.-Israeli war against Tehran has led to a significant shift in regional power toward the regime, which Washington initially said would unconditionally surrender.
“I think the bottom line is it seems as though if there is an agreement, it will be one in which Iran retains its ability to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,” said Mona Yacoubian, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
She added that should the U.S. acquiesce and accept the terms that the two countries decide upon, it’s likely to start another 60-day clock for U.S.-Iran peace negotiations — as had been envisioned in the initial memorandum of understanding signed by Washington and Tehran in June before it fell apart and hostilities resumed.
“Ultimately Iran will continue to insist on its ability to control the strait,” she told The Hill of any future talks. “It’s not so much a compromise, but how that is affected, and whether there is, in essence, a face-saving way for the U.S. to acquiesce to the agreement. That’s the big question.”
Details surrounding the Iran-Oman talks have been shifting quickly this week, with reports that a deal between the two could be reached by Friday, though it wouldn’t mean that the strait would immediately reopen. The strait’s closure has driven up the price of fuel and other goods as a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas normally pass through the shipping lane.
Specific terms of the agreement are still to be seen, including what the arrangements are by which Iran and Oman manage the strait.
Reuters reported that Iran eventually wants fees of between 5 percent and 7 percent of the price of cargo from ships using the strait, while Oman is looking for smaller fees of roughly 3 percent. The U.S., meanwhile, wants zero fees as that was the case before the war began.
Making things further opaque is Iran’s denial that it’s talking with the U.S., even as Trump insisted otherwise, telling reporters Tuesday in California that they were “moving along very nicely” with Tehran.
“It could happen. Tomorrow or the next day,” he said of a deal being signed. “A lot of progress has been made.”
He also told Fox News that the administration was having “very good discussions” with Iranian officials, including an “all-day negotiation.”
“If they back out again, they are going to get hit really hard,” Trump told the outlet.
He didn’t give any indication where the deal stood while speaking in Las Vegas Wednesday afternoon PDT.
“I’d rather make a deal because I don’t want to kill people,” he said, adding that talks are still going on.
But that plan of attack has proven ineffective thus far. Months of U.S. airstrikes on Iran — including the most recent, two-week bombing campaign in July — have failed to fully open the strait and instead drained Washington’s supplies of critical munitions.
“They recognize they have this leverage,” Byran Clark, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, said of Iran. “They feel like there’s really no way the U.S. is going to claw it back because the U.S. isn’t willing to do the larger operation that would be necessary to force open the Strait of Hormuz and deny Iran that ability to control it.”
The vital U.S. munitions have fallen so low, Gulf countries voiced concerns that reportedly helped convince Trump over the weekend to not follow through with his threat of increased attacks on Iran.
Trump now appears stuck in a loop of threatening Iran with fire and brimstone only to pull back and give room for negotiations, a pattern that has repeated itself at least five times since April.
“How many times we can go through this cycle is an open question, especially given reporting that the U.S. has really run through a significant proportion of its interceptor missiles, given the approaching midterm elections, and given the continued impact on not just gas prices, but much more broadly the affordability agenda questions here in the U.S.,” Yacoubian said.
Any potential deal, however well mapped out, still could swiftly fall apart over the whiffs of Trump, who has returned to military action every time he perceives that he’s being viewed as weak, according to Clark.
“That’s the risk is that we get this agreement, everybody looks at it and says, ‘Iran got the better deal . . . and the U.S. got nothing.’ I think he’s not going to like those interpretations, and then feel like he has to go back and do something to demonstrate his strength. Then Iran will close the trade again, and we’ll be right back at…
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