Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, threatened new attacks on Middle Eastern infrastructure Tuesday as Iran awaited a formal U.S. response to a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The competing powers are bargaining over a waterway that carried a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas before the conflict; ships, exports and regional security remain caught between their claims and blockades.
“In a region where we cannot sell oil, no one else will sell oil either; or if our security is not guaranteed, no infrastructure will remain safe,” Ghalibaf said in a video released by state TV. He also serves as Iran’s parliament speaker. The threat came as Washington relied on economic pressure rather than further military action, while maintaining a counter-blockade of Iranian ports to prevent Tehran from exporting oil.
Blockade by blockade
Iran has blocked commercial shipping through Hormuz since the war began in late February with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. The U.S. military’s counter-blockade adds another state-enforced barrier to the same route. Each side presents control as a matter of security or access. Neither claim changes the fact that governments and armed forces decide whether commercial vessels can pass.
The two sides disagree over whether the strait is open. The U.S. says oil is moving through the waterway. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is described as the ideological arm of the country’s military, said Tuesday that “the US claim that it remains open is false.” Spokesperson Hossein Mohebbi said a few hundred barrels moved “under the cover of darkness” with transponders turned off and “at great cost,” but that did not amount to an open strait.
Mohebbi said a truly open route would see at least 125 vessels pass daily, carrying a minimum of 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products. He also warned: “Any vessel attempting to pass through sustains damage — either we strike it, or it hits a mine.” Ships face those risks as both sides claim authority over passage.
Diplomacy with conditions attached
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Monday that Qatari intermediaries had “presented ideas, and we discussed them.” He said they would raise the matter with the American side again before conveying a final U.S. response. Araghchi, in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, said Qatar hoped that would happen by Tuesday. “The current focus is solely on the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, adding that reopening depended on conditions Iran had communicated.
Those conditions include a seven-day ceasefire across the Middle East, including Lebanon, where Israel regularly bombs Iran’s ally Hezbollah, according to Arab News. Tehran also demands the unfreezing of its assets abroad, the lifting of sanctions on its oil sector and an end to the U.S. naval blockade of its ports.
Araghchi and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held discussions in New York last week. Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari said Tuesday that officials had exchanged “several meetings and messages,” including in New York and earlier. “Current efforts are focused on building common ground between the parties,” he said.
Neighbors and competing claims
Tehran’s control of Hormuz has dealt a severe blow to Gulf states, which have also come under Iranian fire, Arab News reported. Al Ansari said Iranian authorities “need to take a decision to distance our countries from this war and to take a very clear position of non-aggression toward their neighbors.” The diplomatic appeal, the threats and the counter-blockade point to the same immediate reality: governments are negotiating access through the strait while military forces enforce competing claims.