- 6 weeks ago
Iran halting all attacks on US allies as Oman talks progress has become one of the most closely watched developments in Middle East diplomacy. The shift matters not only because it may reduce immediate military tensions, but also because it signals that backchannel negotiations can still shape regional behavior. In a region where proxy conflict often replaces direct confrontation, even a temporary pause can have broad strategic consequences. Analysts view such pauses as an opening for diplomacy, but also as a test of whether restraint can survive political pressure. The timing of the change, alongside the reported progress in Oman talks, suggests that diplomacy may be influencing battlefield calculations. For policymakers, this is more than a tactical pause; it is a possible turning point in a long-running cycle of escalation.
This development also matters because attacks on US allies often serve as a proxy mechanism through which Iran and aligned groups signal displeasure without triggering a full-scale conflict. When those attacks stop, even temporarily, it implies a recalibration of risk. In practical terms, it can reduce the chance of shipping disruptions, drone strikes, and retaliatory air campaigns. That is especially important in the Gulf, where energy infrastructure, maritime traffic, and allied military bases are all vulnerable. The broader region watches such moments carefully because they can either lead to de-escalation or simply precede a new phase of bargaining.
This development also matters because attacks on US allies often serve as a proxy mechanism through which Iran and aligned groups signal displeasure without triggering a full-scale conflict. When those attacks stop, even temporarily, it implies a recalibration of risk. In practical terms, it can reduce the chance of shipping disruptions, drone strikes, and retaliatory air campaigns. That is especially important in the Gulf, where energy infrastructure, maritime traffic, and allied military bases are all vulnerable. The broader region watches such moments carefully because they can either lead to de-escalation or simply precede a new phase of bargaining.
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00:00After weeks of fighting, Iran has halted every attack on America's allies.
00:04The United States has also stopped its airstrikes.
00:12So why have both sides suddenly gone quiet?
00:15It all comes down to the talks Oman is holding in Iran right now.
00:18Let me break it down.
00:19Both Sides Go Quiet
00:21Here is what we know for CERT.
00:23In the last days of July 2026, the skies over the Gulf went silent
00:26after almost two weeks of one side hitting the other
00:29and the other hitting straight back.
00:31And the confirmation came from Iran's own military.
00:33The spokesman for the Iranian army, a man named Mohamed Akraminia,
00:37went on state television to spell it out.
00:39American strikes had kept landing right up until two nights earlier,
00:42and then they stopped, so Iran stopped as well.
00:44He explained that Tehran's approach had essentially been retaliatory,
00:47which meant that once the Americans lowered their guns, the Iranians lowered theirs.
00:51The American side is where the quiet actually began.
00:54Around Thursday night into Friday, near the 24th of July,
00:57the United States flew its last round of airstrikes for this cycle, and then held off.
01:01President Donald Trump pulled the campaign back,
01:03and his ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz,
01:06went on television that weekend to explain the thinking behind it.
01:09It's giving diplomacy some space.
01:11It's giving diplomacy a little bit of time.
01:13Giving diplomacy some space.
01:14That was the official reason the bombs stopped falling,
01:17and Waltz was careful to add that American forces were still, in his words,
01:20locked and loaded, with more assets moving into the region.
01:23The president told the story his own way, claiming the other side had come to him asking for the
01:28shooting to end.
01:29We're talking right now, you know, they wanted to talk.
01:32Their people said, please don't drop, don't shoot.
01:34Please don't drop, don't shoot.
01:36According to Trump, that was the message coming out of Tehran over the last couple of nights of
01:40bombing.
01:40And he also claimed that Iran's whole shoreline had been wiped out while the straits sat in good
01:44shape.
01:44By the 27th of July, the quiet had stretched into a third straight day,
01:48with no new strikes reported from either direction.
01:50The timing was not an accident.
01:52An Omani delegation had just arrived in Tehran to work the diplomatic channel,
01:56and Washington did not want fresh bombs blowing up that opening.
01:59Reports also pointed to a quieter worry inside the American camp about how many
02:03Patriot and THAAD interceptors it had left to fire.
02:07The mediators trying to hold this together, with Oman leading on Hormuz and Qatar,
02:11and Pakistan carrying the messages, all called the pause a positive step toward returning to
02:15a framework the two sides had agreed on back in the middle of June.
02:18Now before anyone starts printing peace posters, here is the fine print.
02:22No one has signed a ceasefire.
02:23The foreign ministry spokesman in Tehran, Esmail Baghi, confirmed the pause was reciprocal,
02:28and tied to messages passing through Pakistan and Qatar, while adding that any direct talks
02:32with Washington would need proper ground that the United States had already damaged.
02:36A senior Iranian official put it even more plainly to Reuters, saying Tehran would keep
02:41its guns cold for exactly as long as America kept its own guns cold.
02:44So the calm is real, and it is sitting on a hair trigger.
02:47To see how the Gulf got here, we have to rewind to the fight that lit the whole thing.
02:5213 Nights of Fire
02:53So how did the Gulf reach the point where an army spokesman had to announce that the missiles
02:58were finally staying in their tubes?
03:00For that we go back a few months, and then a few weeks.
03:02The larger fight had been building since late February 2026, when American and Israeli forces
03:07struck Iranian targets and pulled the whole region into open war.
03:10Standing in the middle of it was Oman, the small country that likes to be called the
03:14Switzerland of the Middle East.
03:15Oman had spent years quietly carrying messages between Washington and Tehran, and it kept
03:20doing exactly that once the shooting started.
03:22By the spring, that patient work paid off.
03:24Somewhere between April and June, with Pakistan and Qatar helping in talks tied to Islamabad,
03:29the two sides reached a rough understanding.
03:31Some called it a memorandum, some called it an interim ceasefire, and the goal on paper was
03:36simple.
03:36Stop the fighting, and settle who gets to do what in the Strait of Hormuz.
03:39And the Strait of Hormuz is the entire game.
03:42This one narrow channel carries about one-fifth of all the oil and gas traded on the planet,
03:46so whoever controls it, or even claims the right to manage it, is holding a hand around
03:50the throat of the global economy.
03:52And that is precisely where the deal began to split.
03:54Tehran read the agreement as proof that it had a real role in running the waterway, and
03:58it floated the idea of service fees and management arrangements that would put Iran in the seat
04:02of a toll collector.
04:03Washington hated that and said so out loud.
04:05To complicate things further, Oman and Iran set up a joint Hormuz committee in June to
04:10sort out navigation, costs, and control over their own waters.
04:13Oman even offered some workarounds, like voluntary fees or shipping lanes that would
04:18hug the Omani coast, and Tehran rejected those outright.
04:21Iranian officials had made the trip to Muscat that same month, including the parliament speaker
04:25Mohamed Bagar Galibaf and foreign minister Abbas Aragshi, laying the groundwork for the very
04:30talks that would matter later.
04:31Then in early July, the understanding came apart.
04:33Iran began targeting commercial ships that were trying to sail those routes closer to
04:37Oman, away from the lanes Iran wanted them in.
04:40That was the spark.
04:40The United States answered by switching the bombing back on, and it kept going for about
04:4413 nights in a row, pounding Iranian coastal infrastructure, bridges, and ports.
04:49Iran struck back everywhere it could reach.
04:51Missiles and drones flew at American bases and interests in Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar,
04:56and Saudi Arabia.
04:57And some even landed on logistics sites inside Oman near the port of Dukam, which had been
05:01helping support American naval operations.
05:04This part drew blood.
05:05American personnel were reported killed in Jordan and Iraq, and the Revolutionary Guard
05:09claimed it had hit command centers, depots, radar sites, and the facilities that keep an
05:14aircraft carrier running.
05:15Out in the Red Sea, Houthi actions kept up a parallel pressure on the same coalition.
05:20Through all of it, the public American line never softened.
05:23When Ambassador Waltz was asked whether the country even wanted the war to end, he reached
05:27back across the decades to make his point, a grudge dating all the way back to 1979.
05:32We want the conflict to end.
05:34We wanted this conflict to end since 1979.
05:37That is how Washington frames the whole thing, as the latest round of a fight older than most
05:41of the people waging it.
05:42And that framing was running straight into a wall of public opinion at home, where polling
05:46showed most Americans backed the stated goals of opening the strait and ending the nuclear
05:50program.
05:50Yet a solid majority no longer believed the country was reaching them, and around two-thirds simply
05:55wanted the conflict to end.
05:56Waltz brushed past that, insisting the campaign had gone well and that no critic had shown
06:01up with a better plan.
06:02The Real Prize
06:04So the guns are quiet and the mediators are busy.
06:07The real question is whether any of this fixes anything, or whether the world is just
06:11watching two tired fighters catch their breath.
06:13And the answer sits at the bottom of the strait of Hormuz.
06:16Start with what went right.
06:17An Omani delegation traveled to Tehran and held several rounds of talks with Iranian officials
06:22at the deputy foreign minister level on Friday and Saturday, the 24th and 25th of July.
06:27They focused on what both sides carefully called common principles and operational mechanisms
06:31for safe passage through the strait, while respecting the sovereign rights of the two countries sitting
06:36on its shores.
06:37Stripped of the diplomatic packaging, they were trying to agree on how ships move through the
06:41water and who gets a say over it.
06:43Gran's baggie sounded almost upbeat about it, describing the talks as constructive, useful,
06:48fruitful and productive, with some progress made.
06:50The Omani team left on Saturday evening, and the phone calls kept going after them,
06:54with foreign minister Aragshi and his Omani counterpart, Syed Badr bin Hamid al-Buseti,
06:58staying in touch.
06:59Oman later spoke of working toward fair and lasting arrangements for moving ships through
07:03the strait, while making clear the whole thing still needed more time.
07:06That is the good news.
07:07Here is the part the headline quietly leaves out.
07:09Nothing on the water actually changed.
07:11Traffic through the strait of Hormuz looked the same after the talks as it did before them,
07:15and the core fights are all still sitting there untouched.
07:17The two sides still cannot agree on whether fees for passage should be required or optional.
07:21They still cannot agree on which routes the ships should take, with Iran pushing its own
07:25northern lanes and Oman offering the southern path along its coast.
07:29And they still cannot agree on how much control Iran gets over the entire operation.
07:33Baggie made a point of saying the status of shipping had not moved at all, and that
07:37Iran's national interests came ahead of any worry about oil prices.
07:41Washington, meanwhile, kept flexing its own muscle.
07:43Waltz swatted away reports that America was running short on the interceptors it needed
07:48to keep fighting.
07:49Nonsense, he called it.
07:50Good time, but I also want to address this nonsense that somehow we don't have the assets
07:54that we need.
07:55Even as those same reports pointed to strained stocks of Patriot and THAAD interceptors,
08:00as one quiet reason the bombing had paused in the first place.
08:03And while he sold the diplomacy hard and called the president a man of peace, the message
08:07underneath stayed sharp.
08:08Everyone was smiling for the cameras with a hand resting on the trigger.
08:12The warnings are stacked on every side.
08:13Israel has openly doubted that any lasting deal will hold.
08:16Baggie accused Washington of betraying that Islamabad understanding more than once, and
08:21swore Tehran would not let America decide when war stops and peace begins.
08:25Akramania added that if the American strike started up again, the war could spread to fresh
08:29ground.
08:29Even the oil markets only let out a careful breath, with Brent crude easing back after
08:34it had climbed above $100 a barrel, while ships kept moving with caution, and incidents
08:39kept happening.
08:39Oman is walking a tightrope through all of this.
08:42Its long friendship with both sides is the only reason it can host these talks at all.
08:46Yet the war has bruised its standing with Washington, and Trump had already taken public shots at
08:50the country.
08:51Some hardliners accuse Oman of running a double game, tilting toward Tehran while quietly hosting
08:56American logistics.
08:58Behind the scenes, regional officials floated one possible compromise, where Iran manages
09:02the transit, but with fewer restrictions on the ships passing through.
09:06Which brings us back to the man, who keeps reminding everyone he has plenty of time.
09:10Back to what they were doing two days ago.
09:12That exit door is standing wide open, and Trump had already warned he would restart the
09:15bombing if the ships kept getting hit.
09:17So yes, Iran has halted its attacks, and yes, the Oman talks are inching forward.
09:21The nuclear question is still unsettled.
09:23The sanctions are still in place.
09:25The proxies are still armed, and no one has agreed on who really owns the water.
09:29The theories about why this pause truly happened run in every direction.
09:32From Iran protecting the strait as it's won prize from the war, to whispers about oil
09:36prices, a government in Tehran fighting to survive, and an America that may have paused
09:40less for peace and more because its interceptor shelves were running thin.
09:43Everyone has a version of the ending.
09:45For now, the gulf is quiet, and the whole region is just waiting to see which version comes true.
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