Oman hosts Iran and Gulf ministers on Hormuz with no signed deal expected

Iran and several Gulf states are due to meet in Oman on Monday to talk about the Strait of Hormuz. A senior Iranian official, speaking to Reuters on Saturday on condition of anonymity, said the session would cover the waterway and other regional files and would not produce a signed agreement. Oman called the meeting. Oman has not issued its own public notice. Other capitals have mostly stayed silent.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Friday that ministers from Iran, Iraq and other littoral states would exchange views on safe routes, building on months of Iran-Oman talks. President Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, went further and said Arab foreign ministers would sign an agreement in Muscat on a joint Iran-Oman shipping route and notify the International Maritime Organization. Those two Iranian statements do not match. The unnamed official's briefing to Reuters is the more cautious of the three.

Fees, corridors and who will be in the room

Iran wants a deal that lets it collect fees from ships using the strait. Oman rejects that, the official said. Late last month Iran and Oman issued a joint statement on a proposed phased framework that included a temporary joint corridor. That text is the nearest thing to a draft. It is not a tariff.

Bahrain said on Saturday it will not sit with Iran until diplomatic ties are restored. That absence matters because the meeting is being sold as a littoral conversation without "transregional players," Baghaei's phrase for the United States and its partners. A room that excludes Bahrain and, if others follow, more of the GCC is a smaller room than Pezeshkian's speech described.

Since U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February, Tehran has restricted passage through Hormuz. The United States has run a naval blockade on traffic to and from Iranian ports. GCC exporters have taken the loss. Saudi Arabia then shut the East-West pipeline after drones from Iraq hit pump stations on 10-11 September. The land workaround is closed in the same week the sea talks begin.

What Monday can actually do

A corridor notification to the IMO would be a technical act. Shipowners would still need war-risk cover and a belief that the next missile will miss. A fee levied by Iran would be a political act. Oman will not sign that. Bahrain will not attend. The official who briefed Reuters has already told the market not to expect a signature.

That is useful information. It lowers the chance of a false opening rally on Monday afternoon. It also leaves the strait where it has been since February: restricted, militarised, and now flanked by a closed Saudi pipeline and a Houthi hold on Bab el-Mandeb. The ministers can talk about routes. The hulls will move when the insurance desks say they can.