Oman shelves Salalah Hormuz talks after Gulf states ask for a delay

Oman cancelled the one meeting that was supposed to put Iran and its Gulf neighbours in the same room on the Strait of Hormuz. Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi said late Sunday that the session set for Monday in Salalah had been postponed "in the interests of consensus." He gave no new date.

The Oman News Agency said the delay was meant to create conditions for a constructive dialogue and for understandings that could last. Albusaidi added that Muscat remained determined to promote dialogue that supports stability and lasting cooperation in the region. His post on X carried the flags of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the states expected at the table.

Iran's account matched the delay and added a reason. Mohammad Ali Bak, director general for Gulf affairs at the Iranian foreign ministry, told IRNA that the meeting moved at the request of some regional countries and by a joint decision of Oman and Iran. He said Tehran would work with Muscat on a later date. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei had announced on Friday that Gulf littoral foreign ministers would meet in Oman on Monday to discuss regional issues, including Iran-Oman talks on safe routes through the strait. Speaking to Al Jazeera on Saturday, he said the gathering would "hopefully" include Gulf states as well as Iran and Iraq.

The room was already thinning before Oman spoke. Bahrain said it would not join a ministerial meeting with Iran until diplomatic relations between Manama and Tehran were restored. The Associated Press separately reported that Saudi Arabia objected to proposed amendments to the Iran-Oman arrangement. No Gulf government other than Oman had confirmed it would attend.

The meeting was never billed as a peace conference. A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Saturday that officials would discuss Hormuz and other issues, and that the session would probably not produce a signed agreement to reopen the waterway. What was on offer was an Iran-Oman framework for managing navigation through a strait that has been disrupted since the United States and Israel opened the war on Iran in February.

The timing made the delay look less like a scheduling tweak. Days before the talks, drones launched from Iraq hit Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, a 7 million barrel-a-day line that lets Riyadh move crude to Red Sea terminals without using Hormuz. The line was shut. A day later came reports of a strike on an Iranian cargo vessel off Qeshm Island, at the mouth of the strait, with one person killed and four wounded. Fresh attacks around the region's two main oil transit routes, Hormuz and the Red Sea, have kept charter rates and war-risk premia elevated.

Hormuz is not a symbol. In ordinary years more than a fifth of seaborne oil and a large share of liquefied natural gas leave the Gulf through a channel that at its narrowest is about 33 kilometres across. India still draws about 30 percent of its oil and gas from West Asia. Tanker hire for India-bound vessels has already climbed to levels last seen in earlier closures. When the one official alternative pipeline on the Arabian side is also offline, the next diplomatic delay is a price event as much as a political one.

Oman has spent years as the discreet channel between Tehran and Arab capitals. Salalah, on the Arabian Sea rather than the Gulf, was a useful place to hold a meeting that several governments did not want to host. That geography does not fix the underlying problem. Iran wants recognition of a role in policing the waterway. Gulf states want the strait open without granting Tehran a veto. Bahrain wants restored ties before any handshake. Saudi Arabia wants text it can live with. Those conditions were not met on Sunday night.

Baghaei's Friday briefing had treated attendance as likely. By Sunday evening the same governments were asking for more time. Iran still says it will coordinate a new date. Oman still says it wants dialogue. The flags on Albusaidi's post are a guest list, not a seating plan. Until those flags sit in Salalah, the strait remains a military problem managed by insurance markets and navies rather than by a written route.