Peace talks at the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz, a 21-nautical-mile chokepoint between Iran and the Musandam peninsula, carries roughly 21% of global oil trade and 25% of the world’s LNG. Closure or sustained disruption forces shipping onto the Cape of Good Hope route, adding up to fourteen transit days; in past Gulf disruptions tanker spot rates have run two to four times their pre-disruption level. Diplomatic activity therefore moves both insurance premiums and the price of crude.

A breakthrough came on the Iran-US channel: on June 17, 2026, Trump and Iranian President Pezeshkian signed the Islamabad Memorandum, a 14-point framework brokered primarily by Pakistan, with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt also facilitating. It provided for reopening the strait toll-free for 60 days, ending the US naval blockade, and a 60-day ceasefire extension. The framework did not hold: within days the ceasefire frayed over its Article 5 terms, Iran re-declared the strait closed, and the US and Iran traded fresh strikes. In early July Iran attacked commercial ships in the strait, the United States struck more than 80 Iranian targets and reimposed oil sanctions, and President Trump declared the ceasefire over on July 8. On July 8 and 9 US forces struck Iranian coastal cities on consecutive nights, and Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes on US bases in Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. A limited and contested trickle of transits has since resumed under continuing strikes, while diplomacy has shifted to an Oman-mediated track in Muscat, where Oman has floated separate inbound and outbound shipping lanes and a navigational-fee framework that Washington opposes and Tehran has resisted, and the United States presses Iran to publicly declare the strait open to all traffic. In the days since, the strikes have continued through further US rounds and a renewed wave of Iranian attacks off Oman that set a container ship ablaze and hit a second vessel, and Iranian retaliation has widened to US logistics on Omani soil. Iran has again declared the strait closed until further notice, even as Iran and Oman have agreed to keep the Oman-mediated talks on shipping security going. Into July 13 the fighting has intensified further: US forces have carried out a fourth wave of strikes on Iranian missile and drone sites near the strait, both sides now claim control of the waterway, Iran has fired warning shots at merchant ships attempting passage, and transits have fallen to their lowest level in several weeks. A durable reopening now depends first on the hostilities stopping for good, then on a workable transit settlement, whether a restored framework or the Oman-mediated arrangement now under discussion in Muscat.

What we index here are the public-facing signals: announced negotiation rounds, leaks of position papers, mediator press conferences, and ceasefire declarations. We do not speculate on private channels.