Iran's foreign ministry says the Strait of Hormuz will under no circumstances return to its pre-war situation, and that the talks with Oman are bilateral and concern no third party

Under no circumstances.

That is the construction Iran's foreign ministry spokesman reached for on state television on Sunday night, and the thing he attached it to was the Strait of Hormuz going back to the way it was before 28 February. Esmail Baghaei said the discussions now running with Oman are aimed at a specific framework for safe navigation and a new maritime route, and that an agreement with Muscat does not mean the strait reopens. Mehr News Agency, the Iranian state agency, carried the interview at 9.02 p.m. Tehran time, which is early Sunday afternoon in New York.

This desk published early on Sunday that President Donald Trump had named an immediate, complete and total opening of the strait as something an emerging deal would include, and noted that Iran had said nothing publicly. Iran has now spoken. The two accounts do not describe the same outcome.

What Tehran says is on the table

A route, not a reopening.

Baghaei said Iran and Oman, as the two coastal states of the strait, share a responsibility for maritime security, and that talks between them began immediately after the ceasefire on 8 April and have run through several rounds. Araghchi's first foreign trip after the war was to Oman, where the strait and a secure maritime route were discussed with the Sultan and with the Omani foreign minister. Baghaei pointed at the fifth clause of the memorandum of understanding on ending the war, which he said provides for the future management of the strait to be carried out by Iran in consultation with Oman and through dialogue with regional countries.

The route itself would be new. It would be neither the current northern corridor nor the current southern one, Baghaei said, but a third to be settled between the two governments.

Two further sentences matter more than they sound. The talks with Muscat are bilateral and do not concern any third party, he said. And the mechanism has to ensure the strait cannot be misused by parties that have committed aggression against Iran, in a form under which Iranian sovereign rights are fully respected.

Al Jazeera, publishing the same day under a staff and wire credit, renders the route line the same way and carries Baghaei separately saying that an understanding with Oman on a new route has nothing to do with whether the strait is reopened or remains closed, which it attributes to Fars. Muscat did not immediately comment.

The arithmetic of the last attempt

Baghaei also supplied a detail about the agreement that failed, and it is the most concrete thing he said.

For the first 22 or 23 days of implementing it, he said, the northern route was completely secure and ships were passing through it. The agreement envisaged 30 days to restore maritime traffic to pre-war conditions. Before that period ran out, on his account, an act of aggression against Iran took place.

So the previous mechanism, by Tehran's own description, worked for about three weeks and then stopped roughly a week short of the point at which it would have been tested.

What is not public, and what is only close

No transcript of either statement is public. The remarks were made on television and in a cabinet report, and this desk could not reach the foreign ministry's own site, Iranian state radio and television, or the foreign minister's Telegram channel. What is quoted above rests on two independent renderings, the Iranian state agency and Al Jazeera, which agree on the wording.

Araghchi told Sunday's cabinet meeting that the negotiations are in their concluding stages and moving toward completion. That is a claim about progress and it carries no terms.

Fars also ran denials on Sunday afternoon of reports that Iran had agreed to a plan to reopen the strait, resting on a source close to the nuclear negotiating team and on a military source, neither named. Anonymous sourcing of that kind is not something this publication builds an item on, and nothing above depends on it. It is recorded because it is the only Iranian comment so far that addresses the reopening claim head on.

The water

The incident log that masters actually report to has not moved. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre still lists 24 reports, and the newest remains warning 102-26, covering an incident at 2206 UTC on 31 July, 21 nautical miles north east of Khasab, in which a tanker master reported a large splash and an explosion close aboard and no damage.

Nothing has been logged in the two days since. That is the same silence this desk described on 30 July and it means the same thing now: a strait most traffic is avoiding produces few reports, whatever the risk on it.