Iran Claims Strait of Hormuz to Stay Closed Until Demands are Met

Iran said Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz will stay closed until the United States meets seven conditions drawn from a June interim understanding, rejecting any reopening on Washington’s timetable even as ships continue to slip through the waterway.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iran’s lead negotiator, said American officials had sent proposals through a mediator in recent days that differed from what Washington was saying in public. He dismissed them.

“The position of the Islamic Republic of Iran is completely clear and firm, and the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened until our seven conditions, based on the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, are met,” Qalibaf was quoted as saying by Iranian state-linked media. Washington, he added, “must understand that the period of dragging out the process and dictating one-sided demands is over.”

Tanker tracker Kpler put crude through the strait at a seven-day average of 13.5 million barrels a day as of September 28, matching a prewar crude baseline…

The Islamabad memorandum, agreed on June 17, produced a short ceasefire and provisions on the strait and Iran’s nuclear program before fighting resumed. Tehran has since framed reopening as a return to that framework, not a new bargain.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran had answered the American note through mediators but still had further points to send. “The Americans’ propositions are more or less in line with their previous positions, specifically on the nuclear issue,” he said. “We told them our focus in this stage is the issue of the Strait of Hormuz and the return to security in this waterway requires clear steps from the US.” He denied that Iran had offered inspections by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in exchange for sanctions relief, saying nuclear talks had not begun.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign ambassadors in Tehran, said Iran hoped Washington would choose diplomacy and accept a seven-day plan presented around the U.N. General Assembly. Under that sequence, Iranian officials have said implementation could be finished in four or five days, the strait would reopen on the sixth day, and talks would start on the seventh — if the United States first lifted its naval blockade, waived oil sanctions and released frozen assets. “If they again move towards military solutions, we are more prepared than before and will take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves,” Araghchi said.

President Donald Trump rejected that proposal on September 26. “I reject their proposal. … I rejected their deal,” he told reporters at the White House. “They want to make a deal to open the Hormuz Strait immediately because they’re losing so badly. We’re winning tremendously.” He said he was still willing to negotiate — “I like making a deal too” — but that “that deal would not be acceptable.” He has also said the United States already has “total control” of the strait.

People briefed on the exchanges say the split is over sequencing, not the list of steps. Qatar has been carrying messages between the two sides. Iranian demands reported by state media and diplomats include an end to fighting across the region, an end to the U.S. naval blockade, the unfreezing of Iranian assets, and the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil. Tehran says those steps were already written into the June memorandum.

The waterway, which carried about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas before the war that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on February 28, remains only partly open. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared it closed on March 2. As of Sunday — day 219 of the crisis — AIS-visible commercial traffic, which does not count ships that ‘go dark’, averaged 6.1 ships a day over the past week, about 7 percent of the pre-crisis baseline of 84.8 transits a day, according to the tracker hormuz.now, which uses a prewar year of IMF PortWatch data. Of 43 crossings in those seven days, 16 were tankers and 27 were cargo ships. Against a prewar average of 47.6 tanker transits a day, that is roughly 5 percent of normal tanker traffic; cargo ships were a larger share of the thin flow but still a small fraction of the prewar pace. No LNG or LPG carriers crossed in the week. Five commercial ships had crossed by midday Sunday UTC.

Vessels that ‘go dark’, or whose signals are jammed, are missed, so actual movements are likely much higher. Volume figures tell a different story from ship counts: tanker tracker Kpler put crude through the strait at a seven-day average of 13.5 million barrels a day as of September 28, matching a prewar crude baseline, while refined products were about 677,000 barrels a day against 3.6 million before the war. Combined crude and products were about 80 percent of a roughly 17 million barrel-a-day prewar Hormuz total. Much of the Gulf’s crude now moves around the strait by pipeline.

Army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia said Sunday that Iran would extend the range of its missiles, citing U.S. forces positioned as far as 1,000 kilometers from the Iranian coast. No date has been set for reopening.

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