Iran is expected to meet with Gulf states in Oman on Monday to discuss the Strait of Hormuz, the country’s Foreign Ministry announced. In a statement on Friday, the ministry said the meeting is intended to “promote better understanding among the countries of the region and help strengthen shared regional security”. Iraq and coastal Gulf nations are expected to participate, the ministry said. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei also said: “Iran remains committed to ensuring the security of navigation in the strait”.
For several weeks, Iran and Oman, which both border the Strait of Hormuz, have been discussing how to manage the future of the strategic waterway. Since the United States-Israeli strikes on Iran began at the end of February, the strait – through which one-fifth of world oil supplies flows – has been disrupted and blocked by Tehran. The ongoing blockade has caused oil costs to rise, with prices surpassing $100 a barrel earlier this week. Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu explained that Iran is giving the Strait of Hormuz talks a “wider political spectrum” by inviting other regional countries. “For some time we heard Iranian officials say that the regional issues should be solved by the regional actors, especially when it came to Hormuz,” she said. “So we are hearing from the Foreign Ministry that foreign ministers from the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries and Iraq will be attending this meeting on Monday and the meeting will be held in Oman.” Last month, Iran and Oman agreed on a shipping route, mine clearing and short-term management of the Strait of Hormuz. “Basically it looks like they came to the second phase because we heard Iranian officials saying earlier this week they agreed on the main script on the temporary shipping lane and this would be announced soon,” Koseoglu added.
Meanwhile, speaking ahead of the BRICS summit of emerging economies in India on Friday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the world was going through a period of “unprecedented complexity”. “Iran has been subjected to heavy sanctions in recent years; this pressure has reached a critical and dangerous stage in recent months following the military aggression by the United States and Israel,” he said. “When a country is subjected to political and military pressure on its trade, energy, infrastructure and financial system, the repercussions extend beyond its borders,” Pezeshkian added. Since the US and Israel launched the war in February and Tehran retaliated by choking off the Strait of Hormuz, the global economy has struggled. Amid the ongoing closure of the waterway, the US has continued its naval blockade on Iranian ports. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the blockade on Friday, congratulating US President Donald Trump on “the economic pressure brought to bear against the world’s greatest source of instability”. “The people of Israel stand with the people of the United States and with President Trump in confronting the forces of terror.
In the year ahead, we will continue to make the world safer for all,” Netanyahu wrote on X. Separately, in a speech marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, Trump reiterated that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. “We salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamist Republic of Iran, will never, ever have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
