Gulf-backed plan lets Iran collect voluntary Hormuz fees, Reuters reports show

Perspective Analysis

Oman presented Iran last weekend with a Gulf-endorsed plan to place the Strait of Hormuz under a regional consortium that would collect only voluntary service fees from transiting ships. The mechanism would divide the waterway into three navigation corridors—one through Iranian territorial waters, one through Omani waters, and one international shipping lane—while leaving the strait itself toll-free. Ships would be invited, not required, to pay contributions to fund navigation safety, environmental protection, and search-and-rescue operations, modeled directly on the existing arrangement in the Strait of Malacca operated by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Iran would assume responsibility for mine-clearance operations along the international corridor, though technical details remain under negotiation. A senior Gulf source briefed on the talks told Reuters that the proposal explicitly prevents Iran from exercising sole control over the waterway.

The plan reached Tehran during multiple rounds of Omani-Iranian discussions held there on Friday and Saturday. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke by telephone with his Omani counterpart, Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, and with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan on the same subject. Iran’s foreign ministry statement described the conversations as focused on strengthening cooperation to restore stability and remove what it called insecurity imposed on the strait by United States actions. A senior Iranian source confirmed to Reuters that Oman had tabled new ideas but that Tehran had not yet formulated a reply. GCC foreign ministers held a videoconference the same week to coordinate positions on freedom of navigation, rights of passage, and the need for political and diplomatic approaches that preserve the sovereign rights of all littoral states.

The proposal arrives against the backdrop of a war that began on February 28 when United States and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran responded by closing the strait to all vessels except its own. A June interim agreement between Washington and Tehran partially reopened the waterway, yet that deal collapsed in early July after Iranian forces fired on ships using a channel Tehran had not approved. Iran has since insisted on managing the strait jointly with Oman and on levying service fees calibrated to vessel type, size, cargo, and other conditions. Washington has maintained that any mandatory charges would violate international law and has sought a return to free passage. President Donald Trump suspended a fresh bombing campaign over the weekend, stating there were “good talks” under way, while warning that strikes would resume if negotiations failed. Oil prices fell roughly 8 percent on Monday after the suspension and continued declining on Tuesday.

Under the Omani plan, the consortium would operate without granting Tehran exclusive authority. The three-corridor structure and voluntary-fee system aim to satisfy Gulf states’ concerns about their own energy exports while addressing Iran’s desire for revenue and a formal role. Iran has already established a Persian Gulf Strait Authority to administer transit, and the new proposal would integrate that body into a broader regional framework rather than replace it outright. The arrangement would also align with the 1968 traffic scheme agreed by Iran and Oman under International Maritime Organization auspices, though recent Iranian mine-laying has rendered the central lanes unsafe.

The reporting that appeared across the selected outlets rests almost entirely on the same Reuters dispatch and its supporting details. Every account records the weekend delivery of the plan, the voluntary character of the fees, the Malacca precedent, the three-corridor design, Iran’s prospective mine-clearance role, and the absence of an Iranian reply. None disputes the core sequence or the identity of the principal actors. Differences appear only in the weight given to secondary elements already present in the shared source material: one account foregrounds the GCC ministers’ videoconference and Oman’s diplomatic initiative, another stresses the explicit exclusion of sole Iranian control, and a third supplies additional legal context on UNCLOS provisions that permit limited service charges but prohibit general transit tolls. A fourth notes the South Asian interest in uninterrupted energy routes. These variations do not alter the underlying facts or introduce conflicting claims about what the proposal contains.

The uniformity across the coverage indicates that the proposal itself is being treated as a concrete diplomatic step rather than a contested assertion. No outlet in the set reports Iranian rejection or acceptance, nor does any claim that the fees would function as sanctions relief or as new leverage for Tehran. The articles instead present the fees as contributions for defined services, consistent with the Malacca model and with the language used by the Gulf source who briefed Reuters. Background on earlier Iranian demands for mandatory charges and on Trump’s fluctuating public statements about possible U.S. fees appears only where it illuminates why Oman revived the voluntary-contribution precedent.