Iran Sets Out a Seven-Day Timetable to Reopen the Strait
Tehran has put a sequence to Washington, its foreign minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed: fighting stops on every front including Lebanon, America lifts the naval blockade and oil sanctions and releases frozen assets, and after seven days the Strait of Hormuz reopens, with nuclear talks beginning after that. “The moment they accept this plan, from the next day, this timetable can start,” he said. Brent fell about 1.1% to $105.46. Marco Rubio cautioned against calling it a breakthrough.
This is the June memorandum that collapsed, compressed and reversed — sanctions relief now comes before the strait opens rather than after, which tells you who thinks they are losing. The counter-pressure mounted through the same day: three more Iraqi airports suspended Iranian flights, following the United Arab Emirates and Oman, and Turkey’s chief of the general staff flew to Riyadh to meet his Saudi and Pakistani counterparts under their mutual-defence pact. An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Mohammad Mokhber, answered in kind: if Iran cannot fly, “then no country in the region will have this possibility either”. Urban Coningham of RUSI sees little room to give: “Hormuz is a clear Iranian red line… the only way they can recover economically.” Nine ships transited on Thursday, half the ten-day average.