Iran Demands Six Conditions to Reopen Strait of Hormuz, Says No Talks with US Until Peace Deal Honored
Iran has laid out six hard conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, including an end to the US naval blockade and payment of war reparations, while Tehran insists it will not negotiate with Washington until the United States stops violating the June peace memorandum. The move comes as Iran and Oman signal a deal on new shipping routes, but officials stress that any agreement will not automatically reopen the strategic waterway.
Iran’s top national security official, Mohamed Bagher Zolgadr, presented the six demands on Saturday, according to Iranian state media. The conditions include an end to the US naval blockade, lifting of sanctions, release of blocked Iranian assets, payment of war reparations, an end to threats against Iran, and a stop to US military operations against Iran and its regional allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Iraq. The list also calls for the withdrawal of US military forces deployed around Iran [215269].
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran currently has no negotiations with the United States. “As long as US violations of the memorandum of understanding continue—and Washington does not compensate for what it has broken—there is no chance of resuming talks,” he said, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency [215269].
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil, making any disruption a major concern for global energy markets [215031][215160]. Iran announced a new closure of the strait in mid-July, and Washington reinstated a naval blockade on Iranian ports and ships in response to cross-attacks, halting negotiations under the peace memorandum signed on June 17 [215269].
The US military said it redirected 55 commercial vessels while enforcing the blockade, and also disabled two ships and boarded two others. US Central Command (CENTCOM) did not specify the nationalities of the vessels or the cargo they carried, and no injuries or confrontations were reported during the operations [215193].
Araghchi said talks with Oman about creating a new maritime route are in their final stage, but stressed that the deal alone will not reopen the strait. “This does not mean the strait will be opened. The agreement can be reached, but the reopening depends on meeting a series of conditions,” he said. Specialists are now working on mapping the new sea routes, and the Oman deal will set the paths to be used once the strait reopens to traffic [215269].
Iran and Oman each currently assert rights to separate shipping lanes in the strait. Under the proposed framework, both countries would temporarily use their existing routes before shifting all traffic to a central course, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. The deal addresses overlapping economic claims in one of the world’s most critical oil transit chokepoints [215231].
Some observers have noted that many of the demands were already agreed to by the US in the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, signed between Iran and the US in June. The difficulty, according to reporting from Washington, was that the original language was quite broad, and the new list may be an attempt to tighten those vague commitments into concrete steps [215178].
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have said the strait will remain closed until the United States meets Tehran’s demands, including ending sanctions and paying compensation for war damage [215156]. No timeline has been given for reopening the strait, and the situation remains tense [215160].