Iran and Oman Agreed Coordinates for One Exit While the Houthis Spent the Same Week Closing the Other

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Wednesday that Iran and Oman had agreed the geographic coordinates of a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, and that a joint announcement was being finalised “provided no third parties interfere” — reported by Bloomberg, Euronews and MarineLink from the same briefing. In the same remarks he said the agreement could not guarantee safe navigation while “the US naval blockade and other actions against Iran and its interests remain in place.” That is an announced coordinate set, not a reopened strait. What the arrangement contains is described only by anonymous or interested parties: Reuters, in copy this desk read only in summary, attributed a Tehran-controlled entry regime to one senior Iranian source and two regional officials; Israel Hayom, a partisan Israeli daily attributing to “reports,” describes the two existing lanes merged into a single two-way corridor. Iranian state television calls it a “middle corridor” run by the two countries, and a second state outlet says it will not immediately reopen the waterway and has “nothing to do with the United States.” President Trump told reporters more would be announced “in 48 hours.” Qatar’s Majed Al Ansari said on Tuesday only that “the efforts are still ongoing with all the parties.”

Twenty-four hours before Baghaei spoke, Houthi military spokesman Brigadier Yahya Saree said in a video statement that the group had struck the Saudi tanker Wafa with ballistic missiles in the northern Red Sea off Yanbu, and would “escalate in targeting Saudi oil tankers in the northern Red Sea to close all access points and prevent their passage.” Gulf News reported the group claimed two Saudi tankers, the eighth and ninth since the blockade began. There is no Saudi military or maritime confirmation; The War Zone said explicitly that it could not verify the claim. The placement is not stable across outlets either — CNN’s live file put a claimed strike on a different Saudi tanker in the Gulf of Aden on the same day, while Bloomberg carried the northern Red Sea threat. The mechanics behind the claim are not in dispute. With Hormuz closed, Yanbu became the kingdom’s principal crude export terminal and Bab al-Mandeb its critical transit corridor; Gulf News, citing maritime tracking data whose provider it did not name in the copy reviewed, reported Saudi seaborne crude via Bab al-Mandeb rose eightfold between March and mid-July against the same period in 2025.

The market has taken a position where the governments have not. Brent settled at $79.26 on Tuesday after losses of roughly five percent in each of the two preceding sessions, which TradingEconomics attributed to optimism about a Hormuz reopening; it traded at $80.28 on Thursday morning, up 1.13 percent, down 10.13 percent over five days and up 9.89 percent over the month. The forward curve on Thursday read $80.28 for October, $78.71 for November, $77.42 for December and $76.44 for January — steep backwardation, a war premium the market expects to decay. Physical traffic is less confident. Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded 84 transits in the week to 2 August against 45 the week before, preliminary; a second series on the same page reads 52 against 28, and the page does not say what distinguishes them. NBC’s tracker, updated Wednesday, has traffic “back down following a brief pick-up.” Baghaei’s coordinates, if published, would fix a line on a chart. They would not tell a shipowner who is charging, who is escorting, or what happens at the other end of the Red Sea.

Assessment: The reopening story is being told as a single negotiation with a variable number of participants. Tehran says it is talking to Muscat and not to Washington; Washington says talks are live; Doha says drafts circulate and no direct meeting is scheduled. Those are not three angles on one process — they may be three processes, and the discrepancy is the reporting, not noise to be smoothed. Distrust, in order: any account of the deal’s content, all of which currently rests on anonymous sources on one side of the table; the Houthi tanker claims, which no operator, navy or maritime authority has confirmed and which three outlets placed in two different seas inside a day; and the Lloyd’s transit numbers until someone defines the two series. The deeper point is one no headline this week carried. Reopening Hormuz on Iranian and Omani terms does not restore Saudi optionality if the Red Sea exit is contested. It leaves the kingdom with two routes, each priced by somebody who does not sell oil.