While the deal Iran/Oman Hormuz deal would exclude charging ships tolls or fees, Iran might not be prevented from collecting voluntary payments to cover costs like security and search and rescue, WSJ reports citing sources
- If a deal is announced, the U.S. and Iran would return to the negotiating table to discuss issues including Iran's nuclear program and financial relief, the sources said.
- Oman and Qatar are pushing to build in incentives like sanctions waivers to allow Iranian oil sales into the deal, some of the people said.
- Parties have agreed on main points of the draft, and shared it with the US and countries in the region and Iran's top leaders, who still need to sign it off.
Reported frameworks for managing the Strait of Hormuz have surfaced repeatedly during periods of US-Iran tension, and the pattern has been consistent: preliminary drafts circulated by Gulf intermediaries, main points agreed at working level, and the decisive variable being sign-off from leadership on both sides, which has historically been where such efforts stall. The mechanism at issue here is narrower than a full de-escalation: excluding transit tolls addresses the freedom-of-navigation concern that underpins the war-risk premium embedded in crude freight and insurance costs, while voluntary cost-recovery payments preserve a face-saving revenue channel for Tehran. The more market-relevant thread is the reported push by Oman and Qatar to embed sanctions waivers allowing Iranian oil sales, since any easing of enforcement on Iranian barrels has in past episodes added effective supply to a market already pricing disruption risk, and enforcement intensity has mattered more than formal policy. Gulf states acting as brokers fits their established form: both have served as back-channels in prior US-Iran contacts, and their incentive is shipping security rather than alignment with either party. The tells to come are whether the draft is actually signed by Iran's leadership, whether Washington confirms rather than merely declines to deny, and whether tanker insurance rates and the prompt crude structure begin to price out the disruption premium that tension episodes of this kind typically embed.