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Iran's five peace terms: Hormuz first

2 min read

10:20UTC

Tehran published five conditions for ending the war. The fifth, permanent control of the Strait of Hormuz, would rewrite international maritime law.

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Key takeaway

Iran is legislating Hormuz control into permanent law before any ceasefire.

Iran's stated terms for ending the war, relayed through PressTV on 25 March via a senior political-security official, are: (1) complete cessation of all attacks; (2) concrete security mechanisms preventing reimposition of war; (3) guaranteed reparations; (4) end of war across all fronts for all resistance groups; and (5) recognition of Iran's right to control the Strait of Hormuz. ¹

Condition five is not a ceasefire demand. Under UNCLOS, the strait of Hormuz is an international waterway; Iran may regulate transit through its territorial waters but cannot claim sovereignty over passage itself. No US administration could accept this. Iran almost certainly knows that.

Western coverage has framed Iran as simply "refusing talks" . The five-condition structure tells a different story: Iran has a formal position, and its most consequential demand is being legislated domestically through the Majlis bill and formalised internationally through the IMO notification . Iran is building legal architecture to outlast the war, following the same model Egypt used after Suez in 1957: establish physical control during a crisis, then legislate before it ends.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran has published five demands it says must be met before it will stop fighting. The first four involve ceasefire terms and compensation. The fifth is different: Iran wants permanent legal recognition that it controls the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which most of the Persian Gulf's oil leaves. Under current international law, the strait is an international waterway. Every country's ships have the right to pass through it. Iran cannot legally block that passage, even though the water runs alongside its coast. Iran's fifth condition would change that law. No US president can agree to this. And Iran almost certainly knows that. The more telling detail is that Iran is not just saying it; it is also passing a law in its parliament to formalise the toll regime, and filing paperwork with the international shipping body. Iran is building the legal infrastructure of permanent control while the war is still ongoing.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Iran's Hormuz sovereignty demand is thirty years in development. Tehran has consistently argued since the 1994 Law of the Sea negotiations that its territorial waters include the strait's northern half, and that innocent passage rights are not absolute for warships of hostile states. The IRGC's toll infrastructure built between 2015 and 2025 was designed to create an operational fact before any legal claim was tested.

The war created the opportunity to formalise what the IRGC had been building. The Majlis toll bill and the IMO notification are the legal superstructure on top of an operational infrastructure that already exists.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Iran's five conditions remove diplomatic off-ramps: any deal requires accepting demands that no allied government can publicly endorse, guaranteeing talks collapse if aired publicly.
Precedent
If the Majlis bill passes before a ceasefire, the Hormuz toll regime becomes Iranian domestic law that any future government would need to repeal, entrenching the leverage beyond this war.

Sources:PressTV

Mentions:Press TV →Majlis →Iran →Strait of Hormuz →UN Convention on the Law of the Sea →

First Reported In

Update #50 · Houthis join; Iran holds two chokepoints

PressTV· 28 Mar 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Iran: only allied ships may pass Hormuz

Iran's IMO notification revoking innocent passage for hostile parties is the international legal layer underpinning the five conditions, with Hormuz sovereignty as condition five.

Occurred 27 Mar 2026

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This Event

Iran's five peace terms: Hormuz first

The conditions function less as a negotiating position and more as a public statement that Iran does not intend to negotiate on terms Washington can meet.

Led to

Islamabad four stall on Hormuz terms

Iran's five war-ending conditions, including Hormuz sovereignty, are the structural obstacle the Islamabad Four summit cannot bridge, as Araghchi's statement confirms.

Occurred 29 Mar 2026

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Trump drops Hormuz as core war objective

Iran's five conditions included permanent Hormuz sovereignty; Trump's private abandonment of that demand narrows the gap between the two positions.

Occurred 31 Mar 2026

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Different Perspectives

Kuwait

Kuwait absorbed the Iranian strike that knocked generating units offline at a combined power-and-desalination plant on 17 July, the event that finally moved freight and insurance in lockstep with Brent. The strike hit essential civilian infrastructure, not a trading desk's benchmark.

Asian buyers (Singapore)

Singapore's middle distillates rose 12% month-to-date to 8.91m barrels and fuel oil passed 19m barrels on a 105% net-import surge, buyers retaining barrels as the East-West arbitrage window narrows. Cargoes are being stockpiled ahead of further Hormuz-driven freight repricing rather than released west.

Austria (Coreper holdout)

Vienna is blocking the same package over roughly EUR 2bn of frozen Russian assets earmarked for Raiffeisen, a domestic banking dispute with no connection to the oil cap racing toward its 23 July expiry. The linkage forces the whole package to wait on a bilateral compensation fight.

Greece (Coreper holdout)

Athens is holding the 21st sanctions package at the 22 July Coreper vote over Russian LNG re-export rights, a condition unrelated to the oil price cap itself, leaving the $44.10 freeze one day from expiry without a deal. Greece's own tanker registry gives it a direct stake in how any shadow-fleet measures are drafted.

Marine underwriters (Gulf war-risk)

Hull war-risk cover for Hormuz transits widened to a 3-10% band on 17 July with 5% the emerging norm, up from a 3-4% baseline set in late June, the first repricing in six weeks to track a flat-price move rather than lag it. Cover resets on actuarial evidence of loss, not on diplomatic or price signals.

Money managers (CFTC-tracked)

The CFTC's week-to-14-July snapshot, released 17 July, showed WTI managed-money net long collapsing 69% to 19,783 contracts and a standalone 60,141-contract net short on Brent Last Day (NYMEX). Both readings predate the Kuwait strike and the 20 July escalation, so any covering since is not yet visible in public data.