Iran and Oman have agreed on control and revenues tied to the Strait of Hormuz, but the key shipping lane will remain closed unless the United States accepts their conditions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Wednesday. The duo have held on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strait, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before the war began in February.

Most shipping has since been shut down, driving global energy prices higher, as Tehran and Washington have tried to assert control over the channel, imposing separate blockades. "The Strait of Hormuz belongs to Iran and the country of Oman ... We have been in negotiations with Oman for about a month, and we have reached results that are acceptable to both sides," Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said in comments published by Iranian state media.

"In these negotiations, agreements have been reached regarding the share of each country in the waters of the Strait and the share of Iran and Oman in its revenues," Mohebbi added. The IRGC accused the United States of seeking to obstruct the negotiations between Iran and Oman and said this had caused the agreement to be delayed.

"If the United States stops obstructing and returns to the agreement, we can open the Strait of Hormuz within the framework of the agreement reached ... If the United States does not accept our conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened under any circumstances," Mohebbi said.

Though active hostilities between the U.S. and Iran have largely subsided in recent weeks, diplomatic efforts to reach a peace deal have stalled and continuing attacks on ships mean passage through the Strait of Hormuz remains perilous. Iran announced a blacklist on Sunday of 45 ships in an apparent effort to stop ship-to-ship transfers used by Gulf energy producers to evade the Iranian blockade.

Some companies plan to stop using vessels added to the blacklist, sources said. In an effort to tighten pressure on Iran's economy, the United States earlier this week threatened to punish countries that continue to do business with Iran, but said it would not impose penalties immediately.

The sanctions did not feature Chinese financial institutions suspected of facilitating oil exports from Iran that the U.S. blockade has cut. Iran denounced the U.S. effort to isolate its economy as an act of "gross lawlessness", expressing confidence that many countries would not join the pressure campaign.

Oil prices fell for a third day, dropping more than $2 a barrel to a two-week low, following signs of renewed efforts to seek a mediated end to the war that began on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.

The Kremlin stated that CIA Director John Ratcliffe held intelligence-level talks in Moscow, a visit it described as taking place while U.S.-Russia relations remain in a "profound crisis" over the war in Ukraine. According to a senior Ukrainian official speaking on condition of anonymity, Washington reportedly requested a temporary suspension of strikes on Moscow, St.

Petersburg, and other northern regions during the visit, while the CIA and White House declined to comment.

Iran and Oman plan for temporary Hormuz corridor as impasse with US persists CAIRO ― Iran has held new talks with neighboring Oman on management of the Strait of Hormuz, blockaded over nearly six months of conflict, with Oman's foreign minister saying he was hopeful a temporary corridor through the waterway could be announced soon.

Iran and Oman have held on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strait, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before the war began in February. Most shipping has since been shut down, as Iran and the U.

S. have tried to assert control over the strategic channel, imposing separate blockades. Iran and Oman said on Tuesday that they discussed "a joint temporary navigational corridor" through the strait and agreed to clear it of mines. "I am hopeful we will soon announce a temporary corridor for the Strait of Hormuz and practical arrangements to restore safe navigation," Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi posted on X following talks with his Iranian counterpart.

U.S. President Donald Trump — who has threatened to bomb Oman — repeated an earlier assertion that all mines in the strait had been cleared, and warned Iran against trying to lay any more. Iran denounces U.S. sanctions push Though active hostilities between the U.

S. and Iran have largely subsided, diplomatic efforts to reach a peace deal have stalled, and continuing attacks on ships mean passage through the Strait of Hormuz remains perilous. Iran announced a blacklist on Sunday of 45 ships in an apparent effort to stop ship-to-ship transfers used by Gulf energy producers to evade the Iranian blockade.

Some companies plan to stop using vessels added to the blacklist, sources said. In an effort to tighten pressure on Iran's economy, the United States earlier this week threatened to punish countries that continue to do business with Iran, but said it would not impose penalties immediately.

The sanctions did not feature Chinese financial institutions suspected of facilitating oil exports from Iran that the U.S. blockade has cut. Iran denounced the U.S. effort to isolate its economy as an act of "gross lawlessness", expressing confidence that many countries would not join the pressure campaign.

On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi stressed the need to boost cooperation with China during a meeting with Iran's ambassador to Beijing, Iranian state media reported. Oil prices fell for a third day, dropping more than $2 a barrel to a two-week low, following signs of renewed efforts to seek a mediated end to the war that began on February 28 with U.

S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Despite ongoing tensions, the U.S. is beginning to send personnel back to some diplomatic missions in the Middle East that were evacuated or downsized amid tensions with Iran, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The move suggests Washington sees a lower risk of the conflict with Iran escalating in the near term, though some embassies will initially operate below full capacity. U.S. reportedly not planning new strikes for now Secretary of State Marco Rubio told allies that the U.

S. did not expect to launch new strikes against Iran for now, and would instead focus on other means of pressure, Axios reported. Separately, the U.S. Secret Service said on Tuesday that it was aware of a video broadcast by Iranian state television discussing a potential plot to assassinate Trump's youngest son, Barron.

U.S. public approval of the war has fallen to its lowest level since the conflict's early days, and Trump's popularity is likewise at a record low ahead of congressional elections in November, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. Thousands of people have died in the conflict, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, while the U.

S. and Israel have degraded much of Iran's conventional military capacity. The exact state of its nuclear program, which the U.S. and Israel aim to dismantle, remains unknown. Iranian army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akrami-Nia said new equipment had been delivered to combat units and fighting against two technologically advanced militaries had provided Iran's forces with significant battlefield experience, according to comments carried on Wednesday by Iran's Mehr News.

“America’s impatience in this war has brought the US into the conflict without coherent policy, without clear strategy, and without even trying to create a coalition to support the operation,” Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, a military historian and former head of the Strategic Horizons Unit in the UK Cabinet Office, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

Nusbacher spoke with the Post after Axios reported that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told foreign counterparts in recent days that "for the time being" the US was not expected to continue striking Iran, instead focusing on sanctions and economic pressure.

"The Iranian economy is in free fall, and the regime's military has been decimated," State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott told Axios, "and we are cutting off every financial lifeline the regime has remaining." Iran’s currency plummeted earlier this week in response to Washington’s Operation Economic Outcast, hitting a record-low open-market rate of 2.

02 million rials to the dollar. Numerous reports, despite the denial of Iran’s Central Bank Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati, have claimed Iran is in a state of severe or even hyperinflation. Despite the apparent success of the US’s blockade and sanctions campaign, Iranian officials have repeatedly expressed that they would not falter in their demand to maintain control over the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee even advanced plans to charge fees to vessels crossing the waterway earlier this week. Assessment: Financial pressure not leading to compromise The Institute for the Study of War has repeatedly assessed that financial pressure was not convincing Iranian officials to compromise.

With that assessment in mind, Nusbacher was asked whether the shift from kinetic action to financial pressure was part of a legitimate strategy or a way for the United States to quietly phase itself out of the war. Nusbacher was blunt in her assessment that Washington was “desperate” to leave the “quagmire,” a desperation she claimed the Islamic regime was very much aware of.

The war has been largely a battle of patience, of whether the world’s economy could tolerate the interruption of 20% of its oil supply longer than the Islamic Republic could tolerate a blockade and airstrikes, she explained. Given that the Islamic regime is no stranger to war, she said it was obvious Tehran would persevere through the latest conflict, where Washington’s strategic aims and mechanisms were not fully conceived from the outset.

“The Iranian regime was baptized in blood during the Iran-Iraq War, and from an Iranian point of view the desultory American missile attacks of the past few months have been a pale shadow,” she said. “This is why America is not winning its war against Iran.

” According to the National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information, between 188,015 and 217,489 Iranians were killed during the Iran-Iraq War, around 70 people. The brutal eight-year war, starting only a year after the Islamic Revolution, has meant that short spouts of conflict with the US are bearable for the regime and its supporters, Nusbacher suggested.

“The US has lavishly expended ordnance against Iran, and based on the lack of strategic aims achieved, they’ve been spraying it all up against a wall. Now that American stocks of missiles are so depleted, the White House has gone back to the drawing board,” she continued.

Though Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday that reports of a munitions shortage were false, multiple reports from Reuters and the Washington Post have claimed that the war against Iran has burned through supplies, including interceptors.

Multiple sources told CNN earlier this month that the US military has exhausted nearly 80% of its THAAD missile inventory. Nusbacher said that the Trump administration had “finally figured out that the Iranians can’t be coerced without a significantly greater force package than the Americans are willing to send to the Gulf.

” Trump may give Obama nuclear agreement 'a try' Though former US president Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran had been highly controversial, Nusbacher said that with the Kinetic failure, US President Donald Trump will “at last give it a try.

” Nusbacher added that, “if the National Security shop in the White House hadn’t been gutted and sidelined,” the Trump administration would have tried economic means to rein in the regime “without firing a shot” and could have won. Asserting that the financial warfare should have been Trump’s first move, not the airstrikes, Nusbacher suggested he was spurred ”to shoot first and negotiate later” by the knowledge that neither Russia nor China were interested in putting intense pressure on Iran and by the unfounded belief that he could “depose the Iranian regime with a couple of weeks of attack from the air.

” “As the US looks for a way out of its Iran quagmire, the Administration isn’t impatient: it’s desperate; and the Iranians can smell it,” she concluded. Professor Chuck Freilich, an expert on US Middle East policy, told the Post he also thought the shift to financial pressure was “very long overdue” and “should have preceded military action, [as] part of a phased approach.

” “It is another example of Trump's utter lack of strategy. Having failed militarily and diplomatically and with the upcoming midterms weighing heavily, he finally realized that this was a highly effective mechanism at his disposal,” Freilich said, though he admitted Iranians have “learned to live with sanctions” and such a move would only increase pressure on the regime, not solve the problem entirely.

“The pressure now is becoming very heavy and at some point it may bring the people back out into the streets,” he said. If nothing else, Freilich said that the financial strategy “buys time” for Trump, who will eventually have to face the decision of “whether to leave it just with sanctions and failure or to resume military action” to achieve the US’s objectives.