Iran’s Supreme National Security Council sets six conditions for reopening the strait — hours after its own diplomats declared the Oman framework complete.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council declared on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen until the United States “corrects its behaviour,” and attached a six-item price list to that correction. The message, issued by council secretary Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr and timed to Iran’s Journalist’s Day, was distributed through the government information portal and the state broadcaster, and was carried within the hour by Mehr, Tasnim, Shafaqna and Tabnak.
The conditions: that Washington never threaten Iran or insult the nation’s sanctities; that it permanently end its war against Iran and Iranian allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq; that it lift the naval blockade and withdraw its naval and air forces from Iran’s periphery; that it pay in full for the damage of two wars; that it remove sanctions; and that it release blocked Iranian assets unconditionally. Zolghadr closed by saying the council would not retreat, in war or in negotiation.
A Two-Track Message
The timing carries more information than the content. Hours earlier, Hassan Ghashghavi, spokesman of the Majlis national security committee, had said the general framework of the Iran–Oman understanding was settled and awaiting approval at higher levels; agency reporting placed the draft with the Supreme Leader’s office. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, for his part, insisted the Oman understanding does not by itself constitute a reopening, and that reopening depends on American compensation for breaching the Islamabad memorandum.
The uniformed services closed the pincer. The spokesman of the Revolutionary Guards said reopening runs on its own legal and defensive mechanism, unconnected to the Oman track. The army spokesman told a Tehran rally that an “Iranian order” now governs the strait and is irreversible.
What the Framework Actually Does
The arrangement under negotiation with Muscat is administrative, not merely cartographic. Vessels would enter through a northern corridor near the Iranian coast and exit through a southern one near Oman for a defined period; both would then close, with all traffic funnelled into a middle corridor whose entry Iran manages and whose exit Iran and Oman manage jointly. Payments are described as the price of services rather than transit tolls — the necessary formula, since the Law of the Sea bars charges for transit passage and any discrimination by flag, and since a strait twenty-one miles across leaves no international water between two twelve-mile claims.
The machinery already exists. The Persian Gulf waterway authority processes transit requests through a single portal, requires forty-eight hours’ notice, and assigns Iranian insurance.
The Gap with Washington
Vice-President J.D. Vance said on Saturday that Iran had told the United States it has no plans to charge a toll, and framed the talks as an effort to maximise oil and gas flow and lower American energy prices. US officials dispute that any temporary arrangement would require Iranian clearance. Muscat, caught between the two, warned against steps that could disturb the negotiations and condemned the repeated attacks on transiting ships.
TLF assessment
The disagreement is not procedural. Washington is negotiating the resumption of a flow; Tehran is negotiating the establishment of a jurisdiction. Every element of the Iranian position — the service-fee formula, the licensing portal, the notice period, the insurance requirement, the language of an irreversible “Iranian order” — describes a permanent administrative regime built out of a wartime closure. The six conditions are not an obstacle to that project but its insurance policy: terms pitched high enough that no reopening can occur except on a basis that ratifies the regime.
For Gulf exporters, for European energy planners, and for shipping interests whose registry and bunkering exposure runs through these lanes, the operative question has quietly changed. It is no longer when Hormuz reopens. It is under whose licence.