Oman and Iran are expected to make an announcement regarding the Strait of Hormuz within hours, Al Arabiya sources say

Oman and Iran are expected to make an announcement regarding the Strait of Hormuz within hours, Al Arabiya sources say.

Oman's role here fits its long-standing function as the accepted intermediary between Tehran and Western or Gulf counterparties, having hosted back-channel contacts in past episodes of US-Iran tension; a joint announcement of this kind has historically been more often de-escalatory than escalatory, since Muscat tends to broker understandings rather than deliver ultimatums. The transmission channel is the risk premium embedded in crude and in freight and insurance costs for Gulf transit, rather than physical supply itself, since actual closure of the strait has never been sustained even at the height of tanker-war era tensions; the distinction that matters for pricing is between rhetoric, harassment of shipping, and genuine interdiction, with only the last of these durably lifting benchmarks. Past scares have tended to see the crude premium build on threats and bleed out once passage remains unimpeded, with the front of the oil curve, tanker rates, and war-risk premia reacting before any flat-price trend establishes. The tells are the content of the announcement itself, whether shipping through the strait continues at normal rates in the hours that follow, and whether the US or Iranian military postures in the Gulf shift in response. Until the substance is known, the move is headline-driven and the established pattern is for such moves to retrace if flows are undisrupted.