Iran and Oman signed a joint statement in Muscat on 23 June creating a standing committee between their foreign ministries to administer Strait of Hormuz shipping and determine transit fees "in alignment with international standards"1. Sultan Haitham bin Tariq, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf put their names to it in person. the strait is the 33-kilometre chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil passes, and the question of who may charge to use it has run unresolved since the war began.
The Sultan's personal signature, head-of-state level rather than ministerial, escalates the consultations Baghaei first announced on 18 May into a formal institution with named signatories and fee-determination authority. The founding language, "the sovereignty and sovereign rights of the two coastal nations"2, positions the pair as co-governing authorities over a waterway Washington insists no state may charge to use.
That framing carries weight beyond the rhetoric. A coastal-state body that sets fees pre-empts both the US position and the European multilateral framework drafted at the UK's Northwood Headquarters. It also routes around Iran's own unilateral Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), the body that mandated transit insurance and reserved fees from 17 August, while Oman simultaneously reaffirmed its backing for the Islamabad MoU and gave Tehran the Arab cover The Gulf monarchies have withheld.
