Araghchi Rules Out Talks While Calling the Oman Route Nearly Done and the Strait Still Shut

Speaking to reporters in Tehran on 9 August, Abbas Araghchi said negotiations with Oman over “new maritime routes” through the strait were “in the final stages,” adding, in remarks quoted by NPR: “This, however, does not mean that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen.” On the sidelines of a ceremony the same day, Press TV reported him saying no talks are under way with Washington but messages are being exchanged: “Some intermediary countries continue to make efforts to create the conditions for a resumption of negotiations.” ABC News reported an Iranian official — unnamed, speaking to state media — saying the exchanges run “through intermediaries” and that “the process should not be called negotiations.” Araghchi’s stated precondition is American compliance: ABC dates the memorandum he accuses Washington of violating to June, while Tehran Times, which is state-affiliated, calls it the Islamabad memorandum and quotes him on X: “The assassination of the Leader is something we will neither forgive nor forget.”

The decoupling was aimed inward as well. CGTN photographed the Tehran daily Hamshahri on 9 August leading on the line that the Oman deal does not mean reopening. On the American side, the firmest on-record remarks came a day earlier from Vice-President JD Vance on Fox News’s “Saturday in America” with Kayleigh McEnany: “Our expectation is you’re going to see the same amount of oil and gas come out of the Gulf that you saw before the conflict started,” which he said Iran had communicated to Washington. “But you know, we don’t trust. We verify. We actually look not at people’s words but people’s deeds.” Vance said the plan under construction includes an Iranian commitment not to fire on commercial ships. CENTCOM said on Monday it has redirected 55 commercial vessels, disabled two and boarded two, permitted more than 30 aid ships through, and has over 20 warships in the region.

CNN reported Trump saying on Sunday that Washington is “low-keying” negotiations for now and emphasising economic pressure; Al Jazeera’s live file and the Jerusalem Post’s Monday summary carried him saying the United States is “only semi-negotiating” with Tehran. Both formulations reach us at second hand from a Sunday interview whose broadcaster this desk could not identify, and they should be read as reported characterisations rather than a verified transcript.

Assessment: Two tracks are being pulled apart on purpose. A corridor brokered through Muscat can be operated without anyone signing a political concession, and can be closed again without repudiating anything; reopening the strait is the thing Tehran intends to be paid for, and Araghchi is protecting that price by telling a domestic readership the corridor is not the payment. Vance’s test is the shrewder American move: volume out of the Gulf is measurable and requires no Iranian signature. Treat “final stages” as a bargaining position — Araghchi has now used it twice. And CENTCOM’s 55 is a throughput figure without a denominator: no published count of how many vessels approached, so the number measures activity, not effect.