Iran's deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi countered Oman's Hormuz proposal by asking that Iran control its own territorial lane plus part of the opposite one1. Muscat had put forward a voluntary-fee mechanism modelled on the arrangement in the Malacca and Singapore Straits, where shipowners contribute to navigation aids and rescue services and face no penalty for declining. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday 27 July that recent discussions had been "exclusively with Oman", and that "we have no negotiations with the United States at present"2.
the strait is roughly 21 nautical miles across at its narrowest, and its shipping lanes run in two directions: inbound traffic hugs the Omani side, outbound traffic the Iranian side, both under the transit-passage regime that applies to international straits. Gharibabadi's request would place both lanes wholly or partly under Iranian control, which is why the gap between the two proposals is not one of price.
A voluntary contribution assumes an international waterway that no state may condition. A controlled lane assumes a sovereign one whose owner may set terms. Tehran has held the second position throughout the war, and no mediator's draft has yet found language that lets both governments sign the same paragraph.
What the exchange does show is that the negotiating table has shrunk to two littoral states in the same week the shooting reached a fourth and fifth country. Neither Baghaei's denial nor the American account of deep conversations with Tehran settles what is actually passing through Muscat, and the Islamic Republic's domestic politics require that any engagement with Washington look imposed rather than sought.
