Tehran has rejected an Omani proposal for joint regional management of the Strait of Hormuz, even as diplomats said talks were making progress on a temporary shipping arrangement and no final agreement had been reached. The choke point stays open only in theory. In practice, every capital involved is trying to turn a waterway into leverage.
The Strait as Bargaining Chip
A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that Iran had ruled out Oman’s proposal, saying it had no chance of success. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told state television on Tuesday that Iran instead proposed a temporary arrangement to reopen the strait under which one direction of traffic would pass through Iranian waters and part of the opposite route would also be in Iranian waters. That is the language of managed coercion, not peace. The state decides who moves, where, and under whose terms.
Two Middle Eastern diplomats said Tuesday there had been progress in efforts to resolve the crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, though no final agreement had been reached. They said the emerging proposal focused on a temporary solution establishing a central shipping route through the strait, running between Omani and Iranian territorial waters. They stressed the proposal would be only temporary. Gharibabadi said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed if Muscat rejected Iran’s proposal, and said Tehran had never recognized the southern route along Oman’s coast. Another Iranian official told Reuters that despite Tehran’s rejection of the 50-50 arrangement, it still viewed Oman as a valuable neighbor. That official also accused the US and Saudi Arabia of pressuring Oman to advance what Tehran described as unrealistic plans for the strait.
Earlier, Oman had presented a proposal to Iran for joint regional management of the Strait of Hormuz with shipping firms paying voluntary fees. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the negotiations were narrowly focused on shipping and were not meant to put a full stop to the conflict. Mediators hoped a temporary agreement on the shipping issue would cool tempers and ultimately lead to more advanced talks, the report said. Iran and Oman were still far from reaching agreement on some aspects of the situation, including whether to charge transit fees, mediators and one US official told the WSJ. The whole arrangement reads like a bureaucratic patch over a crisis built by states, militaries, and shipping interests that treat civilian movement as a line item.
War by Proxy, War by Prestige
The talks came after US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington DC on Tuesday. A source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post, “It was a very positive meeting. You could see the chemistry between the leaders.” The chemistry of leaders rarely matters much to the people who live under the consequences.
In the wider confrontation, Middle East Eye reported that US Air Force fighter jets and bombers flew from Israeli bases to attack Iran in recent weeks, according to Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz. Katz told the right-wing Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 on Tuesday, “The Iranians know” that the aircraft took off from Israel. He also said, “The arrogant empire that threatened to destroy Israel has collapsed,” and added, “We announced in the clearest terms that if Israel is fired upon, we will attack with all our might. We are prepared to strike Iran.” Katz also said, “We know how to manage things, and we are prepared.”
Middle East Eye said Israel intercepted at least three drones near the Jordanian border on Monday and Tuesday. It also reported that in the most recent round of fighting between Iran and the US, Israel had played a seemingly minimal role, that the US military and its Gulf allies had launched strikes on Iran but that Israeli forces had not participated, and that Iran had focused its attacks on US interests in the Gulf rather than attacks on Israel. The report said popular US critics of the war, including Tucker Carlson, had suggested that Israel’s plan on Iran was always to have the US do the bulk of the fighting. It said that sentiment was shared by members of the Israeli government, including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who described the renewed US war on Iran as the ideal outcome for Israel, provided Israelis did not have to fight it themselves. Smotrich said, “Israel has no interest in joining the campaign - the current situation is the best for us,” in comments carried by Kan news. Outsourcing the bloodshed is still bloodshed.
A Regional Machine, Not a Single Front
The National, in an opinion piece, said the confrontation had cost lives across the Middle East and upended the global economy. It said what began as a crisis sparked by the US and Israel’s attack on Iran and Tehran's attacks on the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz was no longer confined to a single chokepoint or even a single geography. The piece said Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that the country's armed forces struck a Russian warship and vessels used for transporting Iran-linked military cargo in the Caspian Sea. It said the Red Sea was emerging as a second front, citing threats from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis against civilian shipping and the group’s attacks on Saudi infrastructure. It also said this week’s drone launches from Iraqi territory into Saudi Arabia were additional evidence that the conflict was spilling across borders.
The opinion piece said networks such as militias, drones, supply chains and shipping routes were shaping a rolling confrontation that made escalation harder to predict and contain. It said renewed diplomacy was vital, but that it must lead to a conclusion that applied to the conflict in all its aspects. It said a sullen truce between the US and Iran was possible, but that it must also include Tehran-backed paramilitaries in Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. It said energy security, maritime safety and regional stability were now intertwined with a broader and more unpredictable security environment. That’s the official vocabulary for a region where armed states, proxy forces, and commercial corridors keep ordinary people trapped between threats they didn’t choose.