Iran and Oman are close to finalizing an agreement on a route for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei. Speaking on August 5, 2026, Baghaei said the two countries have agreed on geographic coordinates for the route and that a joint statement is in the final stages of review and drafting, barring what he called obstruction by third parties (New York Times).

Under the emerging accord, vessels heading into the Persian Gulf would travel through a channel controlled by Iran and close to its coast, while ships leaving the gulf would use a channel near Oman. Iranian officials said the agreement includes a "service fee" covering the environmental impact of shipping, security for cargo ships and tankers, and staffing, with revenues split equally between Iran and Oman (New York Times).

A U.S. official familiar with the negotiations offered a sharply different account. The official said the Iranian description was "not accurate" and that any temporary routes through the strait would not involve Iranian approvals or permissions, and no tolls (New York Times).

The contradiction between the two accounts is stark. Iran describes a bilateral arrangement with Oman that would give Tehran operational control over inbound traffic and oversight of outbound vessels, including a revenue-sharing mechanism. The U.S. official, by contrast, characterizes the arrangement as temporary transit corridors that exclude Iranian approval authority and any financial levies. Reuters, citing a source on August 4, reported that Iran demands control over inbound shipping through the strait and visibility and oversight over outbound traffic with the ability to intervene (Reuters).

Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow waterway through which a significant share of the world's oil and gas supplies pass — in retaliation for attacks by the United States and Israel in 2026 (New York Times). According to Iran's diplomatic mission in Copenhagen, 90% of Iran's own maritime trade relies on the strait (Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), meaning the closure has also constricted Iran's commercial flows.

The diplomatic track moved forward through early August. On August 2, Iran's foreign ministry said Tehran and Muscat were close to reaching a deal on a new maritime route through the strait that would be separate from existing corridors (The New Arab). On August 4, Iranian and Omani officials said the two countries had made progress toward a deal to reopen the waterway (WSLS; Baltimore Sun). By August 5, Baghaei described the joint statement as nearly complete, though his caveat that it could be derailed by "obstruction by third parties" signaled awareness that U.S. pushback may complicate finalization.

The broader context here is a dispute that goes beyond maritime routing. At issue are sovereignty claims and revenue authority in one of the world's most strategically critical chokepoints — a narrow passage where geography forces global shipping into a confined corridor. Iran's framing positions the agreement as a bilateral sovereign arrangement with Oman, complete with toll collection and operational control. The U.S. framing strips those elements away, reducing the arrangement to temporary transit corridors with no Iranian veto power and no financial dimension. These are not minor differences in emphasis. They reflect fundamentally incompatible visions of who governs access to the strait and on what legal basis.

Baghaei's reference to "third parties" also points to the multi-actor complexity of the situation. The United States is not a party to the Iran-Oman negotiations, but it has clear interests in preventing any arrangement that would legitimize Iranian toll collection or transit-approval authority in a waterway that is constitutionally transit-free under customary international law — the body of unwritten legal norms that nations generally accept as binding. The gap between the two accounts may reflect deliberate ambiguity in the negotiating text, or it may signal that the parties have agreed on coordinates and routing without reconciling the political question of who exercises authority over them.

Separately, Iran rejected Qatar's allegation over a reported incident involving a Qatar-linked vessel in the Strait of Hormuz in July (Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), a reminder that even before the closure, the strait was a locus of maritime friction among Gulf states.

The joint statement Baghaei referenced has not been published. The conflicting accounts from Iran and the United States suggest that whatever understandings exist between Tehran and Muscat, they have not yet produced a shared definition of the agreement's scope among all stakeholders with an interest in the strait's status.