NEW YORK: Iran says transit through the Strait of Hormuz will normalise once security conditions are restored after US President Donald Trump returned from a visit to China with an agreed desire to reopen the critical maritime route but little in the way of a path to achieving it.
Iran has shown little interest in loosening its hold on the waterway, insisting it wants to maintain a degree of control even after the end of the war.
Iran’s threats to ships in the Persian Gulf have brought exports from the oil-rich region to a near standstill, sending energy prices soaring and giving Tehran significant leverage in talks with the United States.
“Naturally, once the current state of insecurity is resolved, navigation conditions in the Strait of Hormuz will return to normal,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was cited as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Iran will implement effective and professional monitoring and control mechanisms in the Strait of Hormuz within the framework of international law, Pezeshkian said without elaborating.
He added Iran remains committed to a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said last Friday that the strait should be opened to shipping as soon as possible, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.
In response to Iran’s disruption of shipping movements, the United States imposed a blockade on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports in an effort to sever its economic lifeline and persuade its officials to agree to US terms for a peace deal.
The statement from China came as the world’s two largest economies sought to emphasise points of agreement on the Middle East conflict during Trump’s meetings with President Xi Jinping this week – even as they’re essentially on opposite sides, with China repeatedly criticising the US-Israeli attack on its Iranian ally.
On his way back from China, Trump also told reporters he spoke with Xi about potentially lifting sanctions on Chinese oil companies that buy Iranian crude.
The Treasury Department has escalated those penalties in recent weeks as the United States tries to pressure Tehran on talks.
Beijing ordered its companies to ignore the sanctions.
“I’m going to make a decision over the next few days,” Trump said aboard Air Force One when asked if he’d consider lifting the sanctions. “We did talk about that.”
Trump said that three Chinese tankers that went through the Strait of Hormuz loaded with Iranian oil this week did so because the United States allowed it, in an interview with Fox News.
Iranian state television had previously said over 30 ships were allowed passage through the strait since last Wednesday night, citing an official from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ navy.
The White House faces a conundrum: How to reopen the strait, lower global energy prices and wind down an increasingly unpopular conflict that has caused the biggest oil supply disruption in history ahead of midterm elections in November.
Brent crude has jumped about 50% since the start of the war, with traders fearing a fresh escalation in hostilities between the United States and Iran after Trump’s visit to China failed to yield any concrete progress on a plan to restart the Strait of Hormuz.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi arrived in Tehran last Saturday, where he met his Iranian counterpart.
The two discussed bilateral relations and the prospects for resuming US-Iran peace negotiations, for which Pakistan has been the main mediator, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
A modest recovery in vessel movements seen earlier this week has faded as owners remain cautious.
“Negotiations are deadlocked, violence erupts sporadically and the economic costs of the prolonged closing of the Strait of Hormuz are rising,” Bloomberg Economics defence lead Becca Wasser wrote in a research note last Friday.
“Threats to return to war continue to fly, and the status quo is becoming increasingly unsustainable. We think a return to open conflict is likely.”
The only real prospect of a short-term deal appears to be putting off talks about Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, with both sides suggesting that issue be dealt with later – despite Trump citing Iran’s nuclear programme as the main justification for the war.
Iran said it had “come to the conclusion with the Americans” to postpone the topic until the later stages of negotiations, calling it “very complicated,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said at a press conference in India last Friday.
Trump also said aboard Air Force One that he’s willing to send US forces to remove Iran’s uranium “at the right time”, though he earlier suggested in a Fox News interview such a mission was “more for public relations than it is for anything else.”
Iran’s highly enriched uranium, which has been in an unknown location since a US and Israeli bombing campaign in June last year, remains one of many obstacles to a peace agreement. — Bloomberg
