MUSCAT — A single vessel was struck in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend. Twenty-nine commodity ships slowed or stopped. That is the immediate cost of the latest escalation between Iran and the United States, and it frames the first formal meeting of a joint committee to implement the Hormuz memorandum.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi announced on X that the gathering happened this week in the Omani capital. It is the first confirmed dialogue between Iran and Oman since the deal was reached.
The statement is thin on specifics. “During a trip to Muscat, the first meeting of the Joint Hormuz Committee was held,” he wrote. That is all the public got.
What the committee is supposed to do remains unclear. The memorandum itself is an attempt to address Iran’s assertion of control over the strait.
Before the conflict, a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas moved through that waterway. Iran and Oman share its borders. Under international law, neither can block passage or charge tolls.
The strait runs through both nations’ territorial waters. Iran warned Sunday that any ship trying to bypass its preferred route would “increase tensions.” Tehran insists vessels stay in a corridor near its own coast. That demand is at the core of the dispute.
The memorandum was meant to ease that friction. It has not yet done so.
The backdrop is fresh military action. US Central Command said it attacked 10 Iranian military targets. The stated reason: “continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping.” Iran said it retaliated with strikes on US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain.
The exchange did not stop with those claims. A vessel was hit while transiting the strait.
Traffic slowed. The 29 commodity vessels affected represent a tangible disruption to global supply chains. De-mining further complicates the picture.
The report notes sharp disagreements over who clears what. No details are given on the positions of each side, only that the issue is a point of contention. It is one more obstacle to implementation of the memorandum.
This is the pattern. A diplomatic step forward.
A military strike. A competing claim. A ship hit.
A committee meets. The committee’s work is opaque.
The violence is not. Iran’s deputy foreign minister traveled to Muscat. A joint committee sat down.
That is news. But the meeting happened against the sound of bombs and the sight of a stalled tanker. The memorandum is a piece of paper.
The strait is a physical choke point. The two have not yet aligned.
The Hormuz memorandum was supposed to be the framework for de-escalation. Instead, it is being tested by the very hostilities it was designed to prevent. The joint committee’s first meeting is a start.
It is also a measure of how far there is to go. The 29 commodity vessels waiting to transit are the real-world gauge of that distance.
