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. 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”.
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”.
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.
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