Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on August 3, 2026, that Tehran is in the final stages of negotiations with Oman to establish a temporary maritime route through the Strait of Hormuz, allowing commercial shipping to resume, while explicitly denying that any talks with the United States are underway or imminent The Guardian.

Baghaei's statement came as a direct rebuttal to Donald Trump's assertion that comprehensive US-Iran negotiations would restart as early as Monday afternoon. Trump told reporters on August 2 that new talks would begin the following day, a day after he announced he was canceling a planned military strike on Iran. Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi was not scheduled to hold any talks with the US on Monday, and Baghaei stressed that the Oman discussions were strictly bilateral, lasting seven to eight days, with no American involvement The Guardian NBC News.

Trump claimed he had held off from launching what he described as the biggest strike on any country "since world war two" over the weekend, after Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman called him to urge diplomacy. Axios reported that bin Salman spoke to Trump on Saturday and expressed concern over the planned strikes Axios. Trump said the cancellation was conditional on Iran reaching a deal quickly, though he declined to set a specific deadline when announcing the new talks The Guardian. This is understood to be the twelfth time during the US-Iran war that Trump has called off threatened strikes.

The proposed Strait of Hormuz corridor is the linchpin of the broader ceasefire architecture. Unlocking a mutually acceptable route is the precondition to implementing the other agreements laid out in the memorandum of understanding, the ceasefire document both sides signed on June 18 The Guardian.

The route under discussion would be a round-trip corridor rather than two or three separate routes, and would serve as a temporary measure until a permanent arrangement is decided. Baghaei framed the proposal as an alternative to the Transport Separation Scheme, the prewar traffic management framework overseen by the UN's International Maritime Organization, and confirmed that maps had been exchanged between the two sides The Guardian.

Last week, Iran's deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi outlined Tehran's specific demands: ships entering the strait would take a northern route close to Iran, while some vessels could use a southern route. Iran rejected an even division of traffic and rejected any third country conducting de-mining of the routes The Guardian.

One proposal under consideration involves creating an Omani-Iranian joint company to provide maritime services at lower prices than insurance companies had previously charged, with preferential tariffs for certain countries. Baghaei also implied the discussions with Oman would extend beyond a safe transit corridor to encompass future management of the strait, covering sovereignty, national security, national interests, and maritime services The Guardian.

Baghaei was explicit that an agreement on the route alone would not resolve the broader crisis. He pointed to the continuing US naval blockade of Iran's ports and warned that unless Washington's approach changed, there would be no significant improvement in the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. He stated on August 2 that Iran will control the strait and that the maritime route through it will never return to its prewar configuration Al Jazeera NewsNation.

The disconnect between Washington and Tehran's public positions is stark. Trump is presenting Monday as the start of renewed bilateral negotiations covering all major disputes, including Iran's nuclear program. Tehran is framing the same period as exclusively an Iran-Oman technical track on maritime routing, with no US dimension. Whether any intermediary diplomacy bridges that gap remains an open question. Oman has historically served as a backchannel facilitator between the two adversaries, but Baghaei's emphasis on the bilateral nature of the Muscat talks suggests Iran is drawing a clear line between maritime negotiations with Oman and any broader engagement with Washington.

The broader context here is a ceasefire under severe strain. The June 18 memorandum of understanding was designed as a sequential framework: resolve the strait first, then unlock the remaining provisions. With the US naval blockade of Iranian ports still in place and Iran insisting on controlling traffic patterns through the strait, the technical maritime negotiations with Oman are operating inside a narrow window of what is politically achievable. Iran's demand for a northern route close to its coastline, its rejection of third-party de-mining, and its insistence on a joint Omani-Iranian maritime services company all point toward Tehran seeking to translate wartime control of the strait into durable institutional leverage over one of the world's most critical chokepoints for seaborne oil.

For commercial shipping and energy markets, the stakes are immediate. Any route agreement that lowers insurance costs and restores transit would ease pressure on global supply chains. But Baghaei's caveat that a route deal alone is insufficient, combined with the unresolved US blockade, means that even a successful Iran-Oman agreement would be necessary but not sufficient for a full resumption of prewar shipping volumes through the strait.