Iran issues list of demands, dampening hopes of reopening Strait of Hormuz

Yeganeh Torbati, Leily Nikounazar and Aaron Boxerman

TEHRAN - A top Iranian national security official delivered a sweeping set of demands on Aug 8 that he said the United States must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can reopen to maritime traffic, throwing the fate of the critical trade waterway into question.

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, issued a statement carried by state media laying out multiple requirements for reopening the strait.

He called for the United States to lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran, withdraw the US military from around Iran, pay war reparations and release frozen Iranian assets, as well as end attacks on Iran’s allies in the region and threats against the country.

The Trump administration is unlikely to agree to those demands.

A previous ceasefire between Iran and the United States, agreed to in June, had said that sanctions would be fully lifted only in the event of a final deal regarding Iran’s nuclear programme. US officials have said that Iran could only access its frozen funds if it committed to giving up its highly enriched uranium first.

The statement from Zolghadr came as Iran and Oman negotiate an agreement on the future management of the Strait of Hormuz, which sits between the two countries. Iran effectively closed the strait in retaliation for being attacked by the United States and Israel in February.

Zolghadr’s list of demands upended expectations that a deal with Oman would allow commerce to flow through the strait once more and ease global energy prices. It will likely put pressure on President Donald Trump to consider Iran’s conditions if he wants to lower consumer prices for Americans, which pose a risk for Republicans before November’s midterm elections.

Even before Zolghadr’s statement, Iranian officials had hinted on Aug 8 that the reopening of the strait was not imminent. Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesperson for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said that reopening the strait was “not contingent on the Iran-Oman negotiations.”

In comments carried by Tasnim, an Iranian news outlet affiliated with the Guard, Mohebbi said that it would depend “on the United States fully accepting Iran’s conditions.” He did not specify those conditions, other than to say that the United States must not interfere in Iran’s ongoing negotiations with Oman or other countries.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Aug 8 that Iran and Oman were “very close” to an agreement, according to Tasnim.

“However, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is contingent on other conditions, including the United States compensating for its violations of the Islamabad Memorandum,” Araghchi was quoted as saying, referring to the ceasefire agreement that Iran and the United States signed in June.

The June agreement – a “memorandum of understanding” brokered by Pakistani mediators in Islamabad – called for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the temporary lifting of oil sanctions on Iran. Yet the deal’s language was vague, and the United States and Iran had differing interpretations of what it meant.

The United States backed a southern route for ships that skirted Oman’s coastline and avoided Iranian waters, and Iran responded by warning and striking ships that took that route. The ceasefire soon collapsed, and the US reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports.

“The Americans were seeking to establish new routes through the Strait of Hormuz, and despite the warnings issued by our country, they sought to undermine Iran’s management of the strait,” Araghchi said. “Therefore, any violation of the memorandum of understanding or of Iran’s management of the Strait of Hormuz is absolutely unacceptable to the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Araghchi said that Iran and Oman were discussing a temporary route through the strait and that the two countries’ militaries were negotiating the specifics. Officials familiar with the emerging deal have said it could formalize some of Iran’s claims of control over shipping in the waterway.

Raz Zimmt, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli research institute, said the comments by Mohebbi and Araghchi reflected Iran’s view that its negotiations with Oman were intended “at most” to work out how the waterway will be reopened in the future.

Even if Iran and Oman agree to specifics on the strait, “it is clear that Tehran will not agree to implement them without a return to the US commitments under the memorandum, including lifting the naval blockade and resuming the process of sanctions relief,” Zimmt wrote on social media.

On Aug 8, the Foreign Ministry of the United Arab Emirates said an Iranian attack had targeted a tanker belonging to the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as it crossed the Strait of Hormuz. The company said on Aug 7 that at least 15 of its vessels were attacked in the waterway since the conflict began, leading to one death and 20 injuries among crew members.

Just over a dozen ships per day have navigated the strait over the past week, according to Kpler, a maritime data company. Before the war, an average of 130 ships used the route daily.

To avoid detection by the Iranian or US forces imposing blockades on the strait, some ships switched off the transponders that transmit their locations, making an accurate count of crossings difficult to compile. NYTIMES

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.