Oman handed the United States and its allies a written proposal for running the Strait of Hormuz on 30 June, according to a regional diplomat and a US source1. The plan would let shipping companies pay "service fees", explicitly not tolls, modelled on the voluntary contributions vessels make in the Malacca and Singapore Straits2. Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil, so who charges for passage and on what basis is a question with global freight costs attached. The proposal is not finalised, and US negotiators have concerns they mean to raise with Muscat3.
Three parties now describe one waterway in three ways. Oman calls the charges voluntary; Iran's deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi calls them compulsory and warns of unilateral action if the talks fail4. Washington rejects both readings: White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said "Iran cannot toll the strait, which is an international waterway"5, restating the zero-fees line Marco Rubio and the Gulf states set out in Manama days earlier.
The Islamabad memorandum of 16 June set 60 days of toll-free passage, and Oman's fees would take over once that window and the US oil licence, General License X, both lapse in the third week of August. Tehran says it is covering the cost of the current free window from its own treasury, though Middle East Eye's reading of the memorandum text finds it names no cost-bearer, only Iran's "best efforts"67.
The Malacca and Singapore model Oman copied runs on voluntary user contributions administered by a private Japanese foundation, with no power to compel a ship to pay. Grafting that onto a strait where a co-signatory calls the fee mandatory imports the ambiguity rather than settling it. Abbas Araghchi's claim of Iran's "sole" oversight was always rhetoric: the same memorandum gave Oman an equal seat and a joint fee committee, and its two authors now cannot agree what their own instrument means.
