Tehran calls Washington’s Hormuz reply insufficient as transit data splits three ways

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday 11 October that the US response to Iran’s seven conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz was “insufficient,” and that Tehran is “no longer in the process of responding to the Americans.” Reuters, moving the story on 12 October off Iranian state media, reported that Washington accepted some of the conditions and left others unclear, and that Rezaei wants the outstanding items clarified before anything moves. Iran had offered to reopen the strait within seven days if its terms were met. No US readout of what was actually offered has surfaced; the characterisation of American acceptance is Tehran’s alone. Rezaei also told state media that American infrastructure is not yet on the target list: “if war breaks out, many cables, data centers and artificial intelligence centers will come within range.”

The conditions are anchored in the Islamabad Memorandum, the Pakistani-mediated text signed 17 June whose terms Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on 13 September the US must honour before the strait reopens. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said in early October that “the Americans, who say something different in the media, have recently put forward proposals through a mediator,” adding that “the period of dragging out the process and dictating one-sided demands is over.” In Washington on Monday, President Trump told reporters the 3 November midterms would not affect his Iran policy and predicted the war would end “very soon” — a reversal of emphasis from his 9 September line that the war would end “immediately after our election.” The Monday remarks are carried by Iran International’s live blog; we found no wire confirmation of the quoted phrasing.

How closed the strait actually is depends entirely on who is counting. Lloyd’s List Intelligence logged 124 transits in the week to 8 October, against 122 in mid-September, and in a 12 October brief noted a run of tanker and gas-carrier transits since 28 September surpassing the March and July peaks. Windward’s chokepoint dashboard counted 35 vessels between 8 and 11 October, 20 inbound and 15 outbound, with eight of them dark — 23 percent. The tracker straits.live, publishing on 12 October, says the strait “remains effectively closed to commercial traffic, with vessel throughput near zero,” citing IMF PortWatch at four transits on 4 October. Brent, meanwhile, closed at $108.04 on 12 October per Fortune and was quoted at $105.86 on Tuesday by Trading Economics, up roughly 70 percent year on year.

Assessment: The throughput gap is the thing to watch, not the diplomacy. A hundred-odd transits a week and “near zero” cannot both describe the same water, and whichever number wins will be used to argue that the blockade is working or that Iranian closure is theatre. Until a publisher states its vessel class and AIS methodology, treat every Hormuz figure — including ours — as a claim. On the talks: Rezaei’s “no longer responding” is a negotiating posture published through state media, not a withdrawal. Trump has now promised an ending before, during and after the midterms. The Islamabad text’s expiry date was 8 July.