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A delegation of Omani diplomats arrived in Tehran late Friday to discuss mechanisms for managing shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported. The strait has been effectively closed to most commercial traffic during the conflict. Before the war it carried about 20 percent of the world's oil and gas exports, and oil prices passed 100 dollars a barrel this week.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also held a phone call with his Omani counterpart, Badr Albusaidi, Iran's Foreign Ministry said. Neither side released details of the ideas under discussion. Tehran has said throughout the war that it is open to managing the waterway in coordination with Muscat. The United States and the Gulf states have rejected that arrangement. "Vital waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz, must remain open and accessible for navigation, free from any measures that would impede freedom of navigation and international trade flows," Albusaidi wrote on X.
The talks opened as the two sides traded fire for a fourteenth straight day. US Central Command said it completed a thirteenth consecutive night of strikes on Thursday, hitting Iranian drone sites and command centers to reduce the threat to vessels transiting the strait. Iranian media reported strikes on Ahvaz, Bandar Abbas, Omidiyeh, Qeshm, and Andimeshk. A provincial official told state media that four people were killed near Ahvaz.
Iran answered on Friday with claimed drone attacks on US facilities in three Gulf states and Jordan. Its military named Isa Air Base in Bahrain, the Al-Azraq base in Jordan, and Camps Udairi, Doha, and Arifjan in Kuwait. Explosions were heard near a base hosting US forces in northern Iraq, and a drone crash near Erbil International Airport briefly halted flights. The Revolutionary Guard warned civilians across the region to stay 500 meters away from US bases.
The June Memorandum of Understanding paused the fighting last month before collapsing over navigation terms, a dispute that has driven the nightly strike campaign we have been tracking. Iran's Health Ministry says 55 people have been killed and nearly 650 injured in recent US attacks. CBS News reported that US officials are privately concerned the military is expending advanced interceptors at an unsustainable pace, a tension now weighing on decisions about the campaign.
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