Iran and Oman Talks Shake Hormuz Oil Markets

Name: Iran and Oman Talks Shake Hormuz Oil Markets
Uploaded: 2026-09-08T13:45:12+00:00
Duration: 13 min 33 s
Channel: Oman Moments

00:00With global trade hanging in the balance, Iran and Oman are now negotiating to restart

00:04shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The moment news of the talks emerged,

00:08oil markets reacted instantly, signaling just how much is at stake. But will this

00:13breakthrough hold, or is another disruption just around the corner?

00:16The sell-off that happened in minutes. On Monday morning, July 27, the price of oil

00:21dropped like a stone. For two straight weeks, traders had watched crude grind higher and

00:25higher as strikes and shipping fears stacked up around the Strait of Hormuz.

00:29Brent crude had pushed past $100 a barrel during the run-up. By the time the market woke up,

00:33Brent was shedding somewhere between 6 and 9 percent, sliding back toward the mid to high

00:3780s. The United States benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, fell around 6 to 7 percent of its

00:43own, settling near multi-day lows in the low 80s. Oil sank more than 8 percent while global stocks

00:48rallied. News broke that the shooting had stopped. Over the weekend of July 25 and 26, the United

00:53States suspended its strikes after roughly two weeks of mutual attacks with Iran. Iran signaled

00:58it would keep its own guns quiet as long as the American pause held. Iran's army spokesman,

01:04Mohamed Akraminia, said Tehran had halted its operations because the United States stopped

01:08attacking for several nights in a row, and Iranian officials described their whole approach

01:13as a purely retaliatory one that could stand down the moment the strikes did.

01:16United States stock futures jumped early, with Dow futures up around 1 percent and Nasdaq futures

01:21up more than 1 percent in pre-market trading. The actual closes were more mixed. The Dow gained

01:26ground. The S&P 500 sat roughly flat, and the Nasdaq slipped a little as chip and tech

01:30names dragged. European markets mostly rose, with Germany's DAX up around 1 percent, and

01:35many Asian markets climbed too. Airlines, cruise lines, and other fuel-hungry companies rose

01:40as the cost of fuel came down, while energy stocks were the losers on the day. Treasury

01:45yields eased and the dollar softened as the safe haven rush cooled off. The drop landed at

01:50the start of a heavy week of company earnings and central bank decisions, and cheaper oil eased

01:54some of the inflation and rate hike worries that hang over weeks like that. A lower crude

01:58price feeds straight into gas pumps, airline tickets, and factory bills, so when it falls

02:02the pressure on central banks to keep money tight falls with it. The move even carried

02:07forward, with oil continuing to slide into July 28th in Asian trading. President Trump spent

02:12the day sounding upbeat. He told reporters the two sides were deep in conversation, and that

02:17Iran had come asking for the break in the first place. He claimed Iran had asked nicely for

02:28the strikes to stop. According to the president, they told him, please stop, let's meet, and

02:33he described what followed as very deep talks and very friendly negotiations. His own United

02:37Nations ambassador, Mike Waltz, backed the message over the weekend. Speaking on Face the Nation and

02:42on Fox News on July 26th, Waltz said the president was giving talks some space, and a little bit

02:47of room, while stressing that more American military assets were still moving into the

02:51region, and that every option stayed on the table. When reporters floated stories that

02:55the United States was running low on munitions, Waltz brushed them off as nonsense. Back in

03:00mid-June, the United States and Iran signed a preliminary understanding that first cracked

03:04the door open on the strait, and that news had produced a bigger, and more lasting rally,

03:07with oil sliding toward the low 80s as tanker crossings rose sharply and Gulf crude flows

03:12climbed on peak days. The July pause was smaller. Betting odds for a ceasefire by the end of July

03:17reportedly jumped in the days around the pause. The gains still had a ceiling. Shipping had not

03:22returned, the fight over Iran's nuclear enrichment was unresolved, and earlier truces had collapsed

03:28before. The numbers flashing green on Monday were a bet that a fragile weekend truce would hold long

03:33enough to reopen the world's most important oil gateway. The diplomacy that mattered was happening

03:38in a room where the United States was not even invited. The room where America is not invited.

03:44Iran and Oman face each other across one of the most valuable stretches of water on earth. The

03:49Strait of Hormuz is the narrow gate between them, only about 30 kilometers, or 18 miles,

03:54across at its tightest point, and it normally carries roughly 20% of the world's oil.

03:59Around late February, shipping through the strait faced heavy restrictions as a broader

04:03conflict pulled in Iran, the United States, and others. Iran put limits and controls on passage,

04:07and a United States naval blockade followed. That shutdown hit the world hard, choking supply,

04:12forcing producers across the Gulf to shut in output, and shoving oil prices higher.

04:16Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghi, laid out Tehran's case for why it had the right

04:21to shut the water down. Baghi's argument rested on international law and self-defense,

04:35casting Iran as a coastal state protecting its own waterway during an attack, and keeping it from

04:40being used as a road to strike Iran. He pushed the point further. In order to make sure that this

04:45waterway would not be abused by the aggressors to attack Iran. In mid-June, the United States and

04:51Iran signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding, sometimes tied to Islamabad or

04:56to Swiss-mediated talks involving Qatar and Pakistan that laid out how to reopen the strait.

05:00The deal called for commercial ships to return, for mines and obstacles to be cleared within about

05:0530 days, and for toll-free passage during a temporary window of around 60 days. Buried inside,

05:10it sat a heavy clause. Iran was told to sit down with Oman and with other Gulf neighbors to work

05:16out how the strait would be run going forward. That clause is what brought the two coastal states

05:20together. On June 23, senior Iranian officials, including Parliament Speaker Mohamed Bagher-Galibaf

05:26and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragshi, met Oman's Sultan Haytham bin Tariq and Foreign Minister

05:31Syed Badr al-Buseti in Muscat. They put out a joint statement promising safe passage, in line with

05:36applicable international law, while stressing their sovereignty and sovereign rights over their

05:41territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz. They agreed to form a joint working group between

05:45their foreign ministries to reach agreement on the future administration of navigation in the

05:50Strait of Hormuz, the services that will be provided in this regard, and the costs associated

05:55with them. The two sides vowed to keep the strait a secure and open waterway for international

06:00navigation, agreed to consult other coastal states in the region, and insisted every arrangement fully

06:05respect the sovereignty of both countries. Oman, for its part, reaffirmed its support for the wider

06:10United States and Iran understanding. Those words, services and costs, mark where the real fight

06:16lives. On June 29, the first formal meeting of the Joint Hormuz Committee took place in Muscat,

06:21between Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Garibabadi and Oman's Abdullaz's al-Hinai.

06:26Garibabadi later told Iranian state television that the two sides had reached a common understanding on

06:31how to administer the strait, with technical committees and expert talks on a text, and on

06:35shipping routes expected within seven or eight days. Even here, the money question crept in,

06:40as Oman signaled it believed fees could be collected for services actually provided. And even here,

06:46Iran drew a line, insisting that it alone would set the shipping routes under these temporary

06:50conditions, and that it would oppose any parallel or alternative path. On Friday and Saturday,

06:55July 25 and 26, deputy foreign ministers met again, this time in Tehran. Baghi described the talks as

07:02fruitful and useful, with some progress on shared principles for managing safe shipping. This was

07:07the progress with Oman that, paired with the weekend pause in fighting, sent oil sliding on Monday.

07:12Foreign ministers Aragshian al-Buseti also held a phone call focused on navigation security and cooling

07:18the region down, and the Omani delegation flew home on Saturday evening with the technical talks still

07:23open. Iran has framed the new setup as one that fits the post-war reality, rather than a return to

07:28the

07:28old days of free and open transit for anyone. Oman wants coordinated, law-based rules and safe passage

07:34without tolls. Both governments guard their sovereignty over their own waters, which is why a deal that

07:39sounds close keeps stalling on the small print. The United States helped force these talks into being,

07:45yet it was not allowed in the room. Iran was blunt about that.

07:55So while Trump talked up friendly negotiations in Washington, Baghi was telling the world that

08:00Washington had no seat at the table deciding how ships would move. Iran held firm that there

08:05were no negotiations with the United States at present, and that Tehran will never allow the

08:09United States to determine the timing of war and peace. Messages between the old enemies were still

08:14crawling through mediators like Oman, Qatar, and Pakistan. Those mediators were reported to be

08:20pushing to restore the wider interim framework, especially the mechanism for managing how vessels

08:25move through the strait. For all the talk of progress, not a single extra tanker was actually moving.

08:30The strait that still will not open. Despite the tumbling oil price, the Strait of Hormuz stayed mostly

08:36shut. Baghi himself stressed that the overall situation of maritime traffic in the strait had not changed.

08:42On the water, almost nothing had moved. Traffic had recovered for a while after the June

08:47understanding, with coordinated evacuations of stranded ships and a jump in crossings in late

08:52June, before renewed strikes and vessel incidents knocked it flat again. Crossings then dropped around

08:5770%, as tanker traffic shifted almost entirely to the Iranian route. Daily crossings that once sat above

09:03100 fell into the low teens, and in some stretches even fewer. Some tracking showed no liquefied natural gas

09:10carriers moving through since around July 11th. At the worst of the closure earlier in the year,

09:16hundreds of millions of barrels of crude had been knocked offline over time, with production

09:20curtailed across the Gulf, and what little kept moving in July was selective, mostly Iran-linked traffic

09:25threading the northern lane. Few economies felt that shortfall louder than Britain. A senior United Kingdom

09:32official traveled to the Gulf to push for the strait to reopen, and he was careful to say the job

09:37was far from done.

09:44In public, there were positive commitments and warm words. What he could actually see on the water was

09:49far bleaker, and he refused to soften the message. We've still not seen it actually open, and we've

09:55still not seen the shipping flow. The reason the ship stayed home comes down to a fight over lanes. Routing

10:01is one of the sharpest points of tension in the whole dispute, because it decides who really controls the

10:05water. Before the war, ships used the internationally recognized central lanes, known as the traffic

10:10separation scheme. During the fighting, Iran mined or rendered those central lanes unsafe, pushing ships

10:15toward either the Iranian coast or the Omani coast, and that old central channel was largely abandoned over

10:21the mine risk. Two rival paths appeared. Iran mapped a northern route through its own waters near Larrak Island,

10:27and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy insisted this was the only authorized path, requiring ships to call them by

10:33radio. Oman, working with the International Maritime Organization, opened a southern route closer to

10:39its own coast that it presented as a mind-free way to get stranded ships out. Western naval centers guided

10:45some vessels toward that southern lane, and many operators preferred it because it kept them farther

10:50from Iranian forces. Iran rejected that southern corridor flat out, calling it unacceptable and

10:56completely dangerous, and set up, without notice or coordination, with Tehran. Iran's message to any

11:02captain thinking about the southern lane was short and hard. The only authorized route, Iran said,

11:08was the one declared by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and vessels outside it would be dealt with

11:12accordingly. Foreign Minister Aragshi warned that any attempt to create parallel arrangements will only

11:18complicate the situation, increase tensions, and delay the reopening. The reporting described a chaotic

11:24scene of competing guidance, with some ships even sailing dark and switching off their tracking

11:29signals to slip through under insurance and safety pressure. Ships that tried the southern path were

11:34attacked or turned back, and by the middle of July the traffic had shifted heavily onto the Iranian route.

11:40Underneath the routing fight sits money. Iran has pushed the idea of charging service

11:44fees for using the strait once the free window ends, framing them partly on the model of other busy

11:49waterways like the Strait of Malacca, while the United States has stood dead against any tolls,

11:53insisting on unrestricted passage. Oman sits in the middle, backing the joint mechanism while

11:59calling for safe passage without compulsory charges. That three-way gap over who pays,

12:04and who decides the lane, is the knot the Iran-Oman committee is still trying to untie,

12:09on top of the high insurance premiums and leftover mine hazards that keep the whole system slow and

12:14expensive. And hanging over all of it is the threat that the guns come back out. President Trump made

12:21clear the pause carried an expiration date if the talks went nowhere. Trump paired his optimism

12:26with a warning that if the nuclear talks failed, the United States would return to very strong

12:31military action. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his own careful backing,

12:36saying that if Trump could end Iran's nuclear program without returning to intense military

12:40fighting, that's fine. The dangers had not vanished either, with reports of drone activity around

12:45Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq keeping the region on edge. By July 28, Brent was still holding in the

12:52mid to high 80s, clinging to its relief after briefly spiking above $100 earlier in the month when Red

12:58Sea and Hormuz tensions collided. Analysts have marveled at how well the market held up,

13:02helped by strategic reserves and other supplies, while warning that a fresh breakdown could send prices

13:07sharply higher again. Iran and Oman keep talking, corridor by corridor and fee by fee,

13:12with America watching from outside the door. Positive commitments still have not filled a tanker.

13:17Until the ships actually flow, this comm sits only one bad night away from snapping back.

13:23Found this information exciting and unbelievable, be sure to check out other similar and amazing videos

13:28on the screen. Thanks again for watching, I'll see you in the next video.

Iran and Oman Talks Shake Hormuz Oil Markets

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