US Presses Iran Truce and Rejects Tolls on the Strait of Hormuz

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said any agreement with Iran would protect the security of Washington's allies. He spoke in Bahrain during a three-day tour of the Gulf, before a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It was his first high-level mission since last week's United States-Iran framework to end the recent conflict. Rubio said the United States remained open to peace without undermining the security of itself or its allies.

Rubio also said the United States would not accept that the Strait of Hormuz, the channel through which a large share of the world's seaborne oil passes, belongs to any single country. Deutsche Welle reported that he made the comment as Iran's Revolutionary Guard warned against ships crossing the strait without Iranian coordination. Russia's state news agency TASS reported Rubio's position that charging for passage through the strait would be unacceptable and that international waterways belong to no nation.

The dispute escalated on June 25. Hours after the Revolutionary Guard renewed radio warnings that merchant vessels require Iranian permission to transit the strait, a Singapore-flagged commercial vessel was struck by a projectile off the Omani coast, damaging its bridge, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center. United States officials said the Revolutionary Guard carried out the attack, and no casualties were reported. Iran has established a body it calls the Persian Gulf Strait Authority and said vessels passing outside its designated routes would not be guaranteed safe passage.

The framework also carries a commercial dimension. Al Jazeera reported that Washington says Iran will buy American goods, and examined what reopened US-Iran trade might look like, noting the two countries had close trade ties before the 1979 revolution.

The competing claims point to the unsettled nature of the arrangement. Washington frames it as a security guarantee for Gulf states. Tehran frames any unilateral movement near Hormuz as a provocation. The strike on June 25 showed how quickly the gap between the two can produce renewed confrontation.