NPR reported on Thursday 6 August, timestamped 20:58 UTC and carried under its own International Desk byline, that Donald Trump's administration has rejected the Majlis plan for governing traffic through the Strait of Hormuz1. The rejection matches a position The Administration has held throughout the Hormuz talks. The Washington Times reported on Wednesday 5 August that Washington, kept informed of the Iran and Oman negotiation, had insisted it would accept no deal containing tolls in the strait2.
That leaves the United States holding two postures towards two Iranian Hormuz tracks inside a single week: working the Oman corridor through intermediaries, rejecting the parliamentary bill outright. Tehran holds both, and they do different jobs for it. The negotiated track can deliver a reopening and needs American acquiescence. The legislative one can be passed unilaterally if the negotiation collapses, and it needs nobody's consent to exist.
Set the rejection against what The Administration has actually done since the president promised on Tuesday 4 August that the strait would reopen soon. Its regional command reported a higher interdiction count two days later, with the same frozen tally of disabled and boarded hulls. On Thursday evening it dismissed Iran's own legal instrument for the waterway. Both moves tighten rather than loosen, which in practice leaves the Oman corridor as the only route to the reopening the president described.
The counter-argument deserves stating. Rejecting a bill still sitting in committee costs Washington nothing and forecloses nothing. A public rejection may also be aimed less at Tehran than at Iran's foreign ministry, strengthening Abbas Araghchi's hand against a parliament writing terms he would otherwise have to defend at the table.
