Qalibaf says Hormuz stays shut until seven Islamabad conditions are met

Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, told lawmakers in Tehran on Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz will stay closed until seven conditions in the Islamabad memorandum are met. He is also Tehran's lead negotiator. The strait has been the main oil and liquefied natural gas route out of the Gulf, carrying about a fifth of the world's seaborne supply of both before the war, and it has been effectively shut since fighting between the United States, Israel and Iran began on 28 February.

Qalibaf's line was specific. "The position of the Islamic Republic of Iran is completely clear and firm, and the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened until our seven conditions, based on the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, are met," state media quoted him as saying. He added that Washington "must understand that the period of dragging out the diplomatic process and dictating one-sided demands is over." He did not read out the seven conditions. Iranian agencies have tied them to the June interim understanding that produced a short ceasefire.

What moved in the last week

Iran put a proposal on the table during the UN General Assembly under which the waterway could reopen, and ordinary passage resume, within seven days if the conditions were met. The United States replied last week through Qatari intermediaries. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Sunday that Tehran had set out its broad positions to that reply through the same mediators, and that further points still had to be sent to Washington. He described the American propositions as "more or less in line with their previous positions, specifically on the nuclear issue." Iran's focus at this stage, he said, is the strait. "The return to security in this waterway requires clear steps from the US."

Baghaei also denied a claim that has circulated since the assembly week: that Tehran had offered inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog in exchange for sanctions relief. He said Iran had not entered nuclear discussions with Washington. An official briefed on the talks said last week that the paper going around describes a seven-day trust-building period aimed at returning both sides to an enhanced version of the June memorandum, including concrete steps on the nuclear programme. The disagreement, that official said, is over the order of steps, not over the list of subjects.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who presented the seven-day reopening idea, said Tehran hoped Washington would choose diplomacy and warned that Iran was more prepared than before if the United States "again move towards military solutions." Army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia said Iran would extend the range of its missiles. Neither statement lists a new weapon or a date. Both are the public half of a negotiation that Qalibaf says is being conducted against a second, contradictory American message aimed at Iranian opinion.

Why the sequence matters for oil

A fifth of pre-war oil and LNG trade is not a rounding error for refiners east of Suez or for European diesel buyers who have already drawn emergency stocks. The G7 agreed on Friday to release 100 million barrels of crude and diesel over four months through the International Energy Agency, after a March release that pledged 400 million barrels. That release is a bridge. It does not reopen Hormuz. Qalibaf's Sunday statement is a refusal to treat the bridge as a substitute for the seven conditions.

Qatar is carrying the messages because both capitals still talk to Doha and neither is talking directly about the sequence. The June memorandum is the only written frame both sides still cite. Tehran calls it the Islamabad memorandum. The National, citing Qalibaf's reference to a 17 June framework, described it as the frame for talks on a durable peace. The text of the seven conditions has not been published by either side. Until it is, the operable fact is the one Qalibaf put on the parliament record: no opening, and no seven-day clock, until Tehran says the conditions are met.

The risk on the other side of that sentence is military, and Araqchi named it. If Washington reads the Sunday statement as a closed door rather than a sequencing dispute, the carrier groups already in and heading for the region become the alternative instrument. If it reads the statement as a demand for a written order of steps, the Qatari channel is still open. The oil market will not know which reading holds until a ship moves, or another round of strikes does.