By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel through which a fifth of the world's oil passes, remains a pressure point in a standoff that has settled into something short of war and short of peace.
A senior Iranian security official has laid out broader conditions for reopening the waterway, according to Al Jazeera, demanding the United States end what Tehran calls a blockade before shipping resumes normally. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has set its own conditions, seeking commitments from Washington to halt attacks on vessels in the waterway.
Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said he hopes talks mediated through Oman — long a quiet go-between in the region's harder conversations — can finally end what he described as the "neither war nor peace" state of relations with the United States. Neither side, by his own account, has found a way to either fight to a conclusion or settle.
The dispute has drawn in Iran's neighbors. Turkiye moved this week to insist a new defence pact signed in Mecca among Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is not aimed at Tehran, an assurance that itself signals how closely the region is watching for signs of an emerging bloc against Iran.
What is confirmed: Iranian officials have publicly set conditions; Pezeshkian has publicly expressed hope for an Oman-brokered deal. What remains unclear from available reporting is whether Washington has responded to the specific demands, or what a US counteroffer might look like. Readers should treat the state of negotiations as fluid and contested by both sides' own telling.
For a strait that carries so much of the world's fuel, "neither war nor peace" is not a stable place to leave things.
— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera.
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