Abbas Araghchi, Iran's Foreign Minister, told Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Friday 15 May in New Delhi that Iran has "been guiding Indian vessels to pass" through the Strait of Hormuz, with roughly 13 Indian-flagged ships still awaiting transit and clearance requiring coordination with Iranian military "because of the mines and obstacles"1. Araghchi separately disclosed that Iran and Oman are "consulting on future arrangements to guarantee maritime security", without a signed text. The two ministers met on the sidelines of the BRICS foreign ministers' meeting; Araghchi had confirmed his Delhi attendance and BRICS role on 12 May.
India's quiet entry extends Iran's bilateral passage doctrine, already operating for Iraq, Pakistan and Qatari LNG, to a fourth named state. Thirteen Indian-flagged ships waiting at an undeclared Iranian queue translates, at Indian crude import volumes, to roughly ten days of delayed deliveries to west-coast refineries, yet Delhi has registered no public protest. The arithmetic matters: India is the third-largest oil importer in the world and operates the Reliance Jamnagar complex, the planet's biggest single refinery cluster, on Persian Gulf crude.
Oman co-administers the strait under UNCLOS through the shared boundary north of the Musandam Peninsula, which makes the Muscat track the structurally larger signal of the day. If Muscat enters a Tehran framework on "future arrangements", Iran acquires the co-administrator's endorsement of its selective-passage architecture, undercutting the legal foundation of the Western maritime mission anchored in UNCLOS transit-passage rights. Araghchi flew to Delhi aboard the aircraft Iran has named Minab168 for 168 schoolgirls killed at Minab, a Hormuz-coast town: the fuselage carried the Hormuz grievance into the bloc meeting where Hormuz conduct was the blocking issue.
