Iran Major General Rezaei says as long as Tehran's conditions are not met, Hormuz will not be reopened, adding there will be no negotiations

Explicit conditionality of this kind from a senior Iranian military figure fits a familiar negotiating pattern: public maximalism from the security establishment tends to harden before any actual channel opens, and the involvement of intermediaries, here Qatar and Pakistan, is the usual route through which conditions eventually soften rather than a sign of escalation in itself. The distinction that has historically mattered is between a declared closure and an enforced one; past Hormuz episodes have run from rhetoric to harassment to mining and seizures, and only the latter stages materially interrupt flows, with the strait never having been fully closed for a sustained period in prior confrontations. The transmission channels are established: war-risk insurance premia and VLCC rates move first, then front-month crude spreads into backwardation, while pipeline bypass capacity to the Red Sea and Fujairah and any strategic reserve coordination determine how much of a supply shock actually reaches the physical market. The speaker's rank and affiliation matter less than whether the stance is echoed by the Supreme Leader's office and the foreign ministry, since hardline generals have a track record of public statements that outrun actual policy. Tells worth watching are tanker traffic and AIS data through the strait, insurance quotes on Gulf loadings, and whether the intermediaries confirm receipt and engagement with Tehran's conditions. As rhetoric rather than action, the statement sustains a risk premium rather than creating one; the repricing event would be evidence of physical interference.