Iran Attaches Its Permanent-Deal Demands to a Waterway, and Channel 12 Reads a Turn Back to Force
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council issued six conditions for reopening Hormuz on Saturday. Hours later an Iranian military spokesman told Haaretz’s feed the arrangement was “irreversible.”
The conditions, attributed to council secretary and Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr and carried by Iranian state broadcast media, are that the United States “corrects its behavior”; that it never again threaten Iran; that it permanently end the war with Iran and its regional allies; that it pay full compensation for damage in the 2025 and 2026 wars; that all sanctions be lifted; and that frozen Iranian assets be released unconditionally. The New York Times account adds the lifting of the US naval blockade. Nothing changed on the water. Barak Ravid, Channel 12’s Washington correspondent, told The Times of Israel’s liveblog that these are terms “clearly the US cannot accept,” capable of pushing President Trump back toward the military option “that he put aside only days ago.” The Times of Israel’s own observation is the sharper one: these demands were previously attached to a permanent accord covering the nuclear file. They are now attached to a waterway. On 4 August Marco Rubio had said “nothing final,” while hoping a deal would come “very shortly.” At 8:50 pm Saturday an Iranian military spokesman told Haaretz’s breaking feed the Hormuz arrangement is “irreversible.”
The Israeli material supporting Ravid’s military reading is, on Sunday morning, almost entirely unconfirmed. Kan reported that CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper was in Israel on Saturday and met Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and other senior officers; The Times of Israel carried it at 22:43 and labelled it a report. There was no IDF statement, no photograph and no CENTCOM confirmation — unlike Cooper’s first visit in September 2025, which the IDF announced with an honour guard at the Kirya and a published image. The top item on ToI’s Sunday liveblog, timed 12:47 am, reads “Pentagon said to ask US arms firms to speed up output as Iran war exhausts supply.” Haaretz’s 5 August live file carried, as a report, a claim that the US Army’s THAAD interceptor stockpile was depleted by nearly 80 percent during the Iran war. No named official is attached to either figure. On 3 August, by contrast, CENTCOM said on the record on X that US forces had disabled two vessels and boarded two others under blockade enforcement. The UAE’s claim that an ADNOC-owned vessel was hit by an Iranian missile in the strait on Saturday remains unverified independently.
Assessment: Two Iranian institutions said opposite things within hours, and both statements are cheap. A maximal list from the security council keeps the negotiation open at a price Washington will not pay; a military spokesman calling the arrangement irreversible reassures shipping and Gulf mediators that the water stays passable. Tehran is pricing both tracks at once, which is what a party with no signed text does. The more useful signal for readers is procedural: everything in the Israeli press about American capacity — interceptor stocks, production orders, a CENTCOM chief’s itinerary — arrived on Sunday as “said to” or as a single broadcaster’s report. The silence around Cooper’s visit, relative to the choreography of his last one, is itself the data point.