A source close to the negotiating team said Iran is only negotiating with Oman about future arrangements for managing the strait and has not held any negotiations with the United States, reports Fars News

• A source close to the negotiating team said: Iran is only negotiating with Oman about future arrangements for managing the strait and has not held any negotiations with the United States.
• Iran has emphasized from the beginning that the southern route, which was created by the US's breach of Article 5 of the understanding to end the war and pressure on Oman, is unsafe and illegal and is considered a threat to Iran's sovereign rights. The US and some of its regional partners' efforts to turn the southern route into a permanent route have met with decisive Iranian resistance, and US military attacks and threats have failed to change Iran's decision.
• Referring to the Iran-Oman negotiations to reach an understanding on a middle corridor that would ensure Iran's sovereign rights and the Omani side's considerations, the source noted: "If the United States and some of its regional partners had not sabotaged the Iran-Oman bilateral negotiations from the beginning, these negotiations would certainly have been concluded in a short period of time."
• Over the past few days, some American officials have sent contradictory signals and have disrupted the negotiations process, either directly or through some regional partners, and there is still concern that obstruction by the United States or some regional parties will prolong the negotiations or disrupt them.
• However, even if these negotiations end in a bilateral agreement between Iran and Oman, it cannot in itself provide the necessary conditions for securing the Strait of Hormuz, because the Strait of Hormuz was closed due to the US's breach of the treaty, and without providing all the necessary supplies, stopping the US's aggressions and crimes against Iran and its interests, and fulfilling the conditions, the conditions in the Strait will not return to the way they were a month ago.

Strait of Hormuz negotiation headlines follow a well-worn sequence in past episodes of this kind: denials of direct US contact, routing through intermediaries such as Oman, and conditional language on reopening have tended to signal a prolonged standoff rather than imminent resolution, keeping the geopolitical premium embedded in crude, freight rates and war-risk insurance rather than releasing it in one move. The transmission channel here is specific: it is not Iranian production but the tanker lane itself, so the sensitivity sits in front-month WTI and Brent timespreads, shipping and insurance costs, and secondarily in the energy-importing currencies on the tag list, JPY and EUR, against the dollar's customary safe-haven bid in Hormuz stress episodes. The notable element is the explicit denial of US talks combined with the claim that a bilateral Iran-Oman understanding would not alone restore prior conditions, which in comparable episodes has been the formulation used to keep escalation optionality open while blaming Washington for the impasse. Fars-sourced sourcing of this kind has historically reflected official messaging rather than independent reporting, so the read-through is intent, not fact on the ground. What is worth watching next is whether Oman confirms or reframes the talks, any US official response, and tanker traffic and insurance pricing through the strait, which in past episodes have been the first places a genuine de-escalation shows up.