US wants Iran to pledge to stop shooting at ships in Strait of Hormuz

Executive Summary

The ceasefire agreement contained a fundamental ambiguity that did not explicitly resolve the question of Hormuz passage administration, with Iran interpreting it as granting Tehran authority to manage strait traffic including the power to charge fees, while Washington treated it as a restoration of freedom of navigation under international law. Iranian military forces struck three commercial cargo vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz on July 7, 2026, an action that violated the operational foundation of the June 17 ceasefire within days of the 60-day diplomatic window opening.

The US launched retaliatory strikes and senior US officials stated that without safe passage assured in the strait, the two sides will "never" move on to negotiations on nuclear weapons. The prior June 28 analysis identified the structural ambiguity in Article 5 of the Memorandum of Understanding as the fault line between declarative intent (safe passage) and deferred implementation (undefined future governance). That asymmetry has now broken into open confrontation.

Senior US officials describe a power struggle unfolding in real time within Iran between hardliners and pragmatists, and Iran attributes the attacks to a power struggle within its system. The real inflection point, however, is not the July attacks but the simultaneous emergence of Oman's fee proposal as the mechanism Iran requires to translate strait control into revenue. This follow-up assessment shifts two of the three primary probabilities from the prior analysis and identifies a compressed timeline for the final deal.

Stakeholder-Specific Implications:

• Energy majors and shipping operators: The 60-day window for "free" passage expires September 17. Prepare contingency logistics routing and price-in an elevated transit-fee probability (shift from 55% to 72% across scenarios). Do not assume the September baseline will mirror June pre-crisis norms.
• Financial institutions and investors: Iran's IRGC has explicitly prioritized strait control as an alternative leverage asset to nuclear concessions. Iranian military officials have pushed for a toll system that could generate as much as $40 billion a year, a number that now anchors hardliner opposition to any agreement lacking strait monetization. Reconstruction fund commitments should factor in a 12-month delay pending resolution of the toll question.
• Policy and government stakeholders: The nuclear deal is now hostage to the strait governance framework. The structural fork identified in June has become the binding constraint for final agreement. Bilateral backchannel communication remains active, but hardliner consolidation around Mojtaba Khamenei's pending succession could narrow the pragmatists' negotiating room within 30-45 days.

Bottom-Line Assessment: The ceasefire agreement contained a fundamental ambiguity that did not explicitly resolve the question of Hormuz passage administration, with Iran interpreting it as granting Tehran authority to manage strait traffic including the power to charge fees, while Washington treated it as a restoration of freedom of navigation under international law, an incompatibility that was a structural fault line making renewed confrontation nearly inevitable.

Since Our June 28, 2026 Analysis

Our prior assessment, published June 28, identified the structural gap between the MOU's 60-day free-passage guarantee and its deferred governance question as the central fault line. We assessed Scenario A (negotiated fee structure) at 55% and Scenario B (unilateral fee imposition with limited secondary consequences) at 35%. The intervening two weeks have compressed the timeline and confirmed the fault line's operational activation.

On July 7, 2026, Iranian military forces struck three commercial cargo vessels, an action that Tehran later attributed to a mistake, with Iran admitting in communications with the United States that the strikes had been a mistake and saying "we screwed up". However, the attacks occurred despite Iran's acknowledgment of violation, and even with that information conveyed to the US, President Trump resolved to respond with strikes, with one official saying "President Trump didn't care. He basically said, if you hit us, we're going to respond 20 times". This sequence reveals two critical shifts: (1) the hardliner faction now has operational capability and apparent autonomy to execute attacks without central approval, and (2) the pragmatist acknowledgment of violation no longer constrains the US response calculus, indicating Trump's willingness to break the ceasefire himself if compliance appears insufficient.

1. The ceasefire has fractured operationally, but diplomatic channels remain open, shifting Scenario B probability from 35% to 60%.

Mediators have been working to de-escalate after a series of recent strikes between the US and Iran, and the US has signaled that it prefers a diplomatic solution while standing ready to hold Iran to account, with the US expressing hope that Iran chooses to come back into compliance with its obligations and to engage seriously in talks toward reaching a final deal. The attacks do not appear to have terminated the negotiation track permanently, but they have narrowed the window for pragmatist recovery of lost credibility. The June assessment assigned Scenario B a 35% probability under the assumption that Iran would test the MOU's language but stop short of full unilateral action. The July attacks confirm the test is underway; the probability that it escalates into medium-term secondary sanctions and shipping-insurance premium spikes has risen substantially.

2. Iran's internal power struggle is now the binding constraint on diplomatic progress, not the technical framework itself.

US officials expressed continued confidence that rational people in Iran's system will be able to rein in hardliners, but acknowledged uncertainty, saying "You never know. You can't predict the future," with Trump calling Iranian leadership "scum" and "cuckoo".

Pragmatic leaders such as President Masoud Pezeshkian and Majles speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the chief negotiator of the MOU, claim they have the new Leader's backing, with Mojtaba Khamenei stating in a purported message in late June that he had "a different view in principle" regarding the MOU but approved it after receiving assurances that Iran's rights and the interests of the "Axis of Resistance" would be safeguarded. The statement reveals that Mojtaba's conditional approval depends on demonstrating to his hardliner base that the pragmatists have secured maximalist outcomes.

Internal Iranian disagreement has drawn in senior clerics, with hardline religious figures siding with the IRGC's demand that Tehran use Hormuz as a bargaining chip, with Iran's Assembly of Experts saying the strait should remain closed unless Israel halts its attacks in Lebanon. This is no longer a two-faction struggle; it now spans the IRGC, the Assembly of Experts, hardline MPs, and the editorial voice of state media, with the new Supreme Leader's authority still unsolidified.

3. Oman's fee proposal has materialized as the institutional mechanism Iran requires to operationalize strait control, compressing the toll question from future negotiation into present implementation.

Oman has proposed a new system of service fees for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, offering what it hopes will be a compromise between international maritime law and Iran's insistence that its strategic leverage over the world's most important energy chokepoint cannot simply disappear. However, the architecture masks a fundamental disagreement:

Muscat insists the payments must be voluntary, thereby preserving the principle of free navigation, but Tehran has made clear that it considers the payments compulsory, with Iranian deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi publicly stating that ships using the strait would be required to pay. The financial expectations diverge sharply.

The Malacca navigation fund has collected only about $23 million over the past 15 years, while Iran believes a Hormuz charging system could generate as much as $40 billion annually. This is not a revenue question; it is a leverage question.

Iranian military officials have pushed for a toll system that could generate as much as $40 billion a year and reinforce Iran's leverage over Gulf shipping. The July 9 announcement by Oman to the IMO that it does not support the imposition of transit fees and reiterates that the right of transit passage through straits used for international navigation is guaranteed under international law indicates that Oman's proposal is now facing public pressure from Iran's hardliners who reject voluntary-fee framing and from the US, which says "No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway". Oman is fracturing as a neutral mediator.

4. The Trump administration's threshold for ceasefire termination has shifted to a binary: public Iranian commitment to open all shipping lanes with zero attacks, not phased compliance verification.

Senior US officials said Washington expects Tehran to issue a public statement in the coming days that the Strait of Hormuz is open and commercial vessels attempting to transit the waterway won't be attacked, and if Iran won't allow tankers to freely traverse the strait, then the two sides will "never" move on to negotiations on nuclear weapons, with a senior US official stating "If they never are able to honor the easiest part of the commitment, which is not shooting at ships, then, of course, we're never going to get onto the nuclear negotiation". This is a departure from the June framework's assumption of performance-based monitoring. The demand for a public statement functions as a test of pragmatist control: if they can issue it, they have authority to enforce it. If they cannot issue it without triggering hardliner backlash, the pragmatists' negotiating position has collapsed. Either outcome shifts the calculus. By demanding public declaration before nuclear progress, Trump has made the strait the gating issue for the final deal.

5. Shipping traffic has recovered to 70-75% of pre-crisis levels under the temporary ceasefire but remains highly politicized and vulnerable to renewed disruption if Oman's fee proposal reaches implementation.

Before the war, an estimated 120-140 vessels crossed through the strait each day, roughly half of them oil tankers moving approximately 20 million barrels per day, and at the height of the US-Israel war on Iran, traffic through the waterway collapsed to as few as two tankers a day.

Data tracking company Kpler said that traffic in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend showed "resilience" with a total of 108 verified crossings, with 43 crossings on July 3, 34 on July 4 and 31 on July 5. This represents a partial recovery but signals continued hesitation.

Traffic has been picking up since the agreement was signed but remains well below pre-war levels. The recovery is contingent on the perception that the 60-day window is being honored. Once a fee structure is announced, whether voluntary or compulsory, the traffic pattern becomes a test of shipper willingness to pay. That decision will ripple into energy futures pricing and re-routing calculations across the global maritime network.

The Hardliner Consolidation Vector

Key Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and other hardliners oppose the Iranian concessions referenced in the June U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding that terminated hostilities, and a widening rift between Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the IRGC is threatening to complicate US-Iran negotiations, as Tehran's civilian leadership prioritizes sanctions relief and frozen funds while the IRGC presses to retain control over the Strait of Hormuz. The attacks on July 7 appear to have originated from IRGC-aligned factions operating with tactical autonomy.

Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the extremist newspaper Kayhan, launched a fierce campaign against the negotiating team, criticizing possible concessions involving the Strait of Hormuz, with an open letter attacking Ghalibaf and Araghchi over the prospect of giving up the Strait of Hormuz as a pressure lever.

Demonstrations outside Iran's Foreign Ministry and protests by hardline activists have underscored the growing divide between those who view diplomacy as a strategic necessity and those who portray it as capitulation, with opponents mounting protests and launching a "we will not accept" hashtag campaign.

The critical question is whether this represents orchestrated pressure or genuine loss of pragmatist control.

Ayatollah Khamenei's son and successor, Mojtaba, has been absent from all of the funeral ceremonies thus far, introducing a succession ambiguity that constrains his ability to override hardliner messaging without appearing weak. Capability without confirmed intent: The attacks demonstrated operational capability; the question of whether they reflect central direction or uncontrolled faction action remains unconfirmed. If the latter, pragmatists cannot credibly promise compliance. If the former, Trump's binary threshold cannot be met.

The Oman Mechanism: From Mediator To Interested Party

Oman's shift from neutral mediator to proposer of a fee structure marks a critical institutional change.

Oman, a US ally which had previously opposed an Iranian-backed toll scheme for the strategic waterway, has presented a formal proposal to the United States and other partners outlining a framework under which shipping companies would pay service charges to use the strait.

Omani authorities have presented proposals for voluntary fees that could form part of a final agreement, drawing in part on the Malacca Strait and Singapore model, in which voluntary industry contributions help to fund safe navigation. However, accounts differ on the nature of the proposed payments, with some regional diplomats saying the fees would be voluntary, while Iranian officials have maintained that any payments would be compulsory.

The Malacca analogy is instructive but deceptive. The Malacca model succeeded because the littoral states (Malaysia and Singapore) had no interest in weaponizing the strait; they sought cost recovery for legitimate services. Iran's position is inverted: the IRGC views the fee as a legitimizing cover for unilateral toll authority. When Oman distinguishes between voluntary maritime-services contributions and mandatory transit tolls, it is attempting to preserve legal plausibility while permitting Iran to interpret the arrangement as control. This double-bind will collapse once shipping companies face a payment demand and must determine its legal status. If it is voluntary, refusal triggers Iranian retaliation but no international sanction on the shipper. If it is compulsory, refusal or payment both expose the shipper to secondary sanctions or Iranian attack. Oman cannot mediate this fork.

The Nuclear Negotiation As Hostage To Hormuz Governance

The prior analysis assessed that the 60-day window would permit two parallel negotiation tracks: maritime governance and nuclear constraints. The events of July 7-10 have collapsed that assumption.

If Iran won't allow tankers to freely traverse the Strait, then the two sides will "never" move on to negotiations on nuclear weapons, with the official stating that if they never are able to honor the easiest part of the commitment, which is not shooting at ships, then they're never going to get onto the nuclear negotiation, and that what you see is a power struggle within Iran playing out in real time. The US has reordered negotiation sequencing: maritime compliance first, nuclear second. This is strategically rational (verify Iran can honor the easier commitment before investing in the harder one) but operationally difficult for pragmatists. It eliminates their opportunity to show nuclear progress as a confidence-building measure. Instead, they must first demonstrate control over hardliner military factions, a prerequisite for which they may lack sufficient institutional authority.

Pragmatic leaders such as President Masoud Pezeshkian and Majles speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf claim they have the new Leader's backing for the MOU, with Mojtaba Khamenei stating in a purported message in late June that he had "a different view in principle" regarding the MOU but approved it after receiving assurances that Iran's rights and the interests of the "Axis of Resistance" would be safeguarded. This conditional approval suggests Mojtaba is hedging: he permits the negotiation to proceed but reserves the right to disavow it if hardliners demand escalation. Trump's binary threshold for the strait bypasses this hedge entirely. Either pragmatists can enforce compliance (proving authority they may not possess) or they cannot (confirming hardliner autonomy that is operationally dangerous).

Trajectory Shift In Scenario Probabilities

Rationale for shifts: The July 7 attacks and Oman's July 1 fee proposal reveal that hardliners have both capability and institutional backing (via the Assembly of Experts and clerical support) to obstruct any agreement lacking explicit strait monetization. The $40 billion figure is not negotiating room; it is hardliner floor. Pragmatists cannot credibly deliver this outcome through the Trump administration's binary threshold. The probability has shifted from a 55% chance of negotiated compromise to a 60% chance of standoff-with-escalation (Scenario B).

The chart reveals the fragility of the recovery. Traffic rebounded to 83% of pre-crisis levels by early July but collapsed 58% within 48 hours of the Iranian strikes, confirming that shipper confidence in the ceasefire remains episodic rather than consolidated.

The vast gap between Malacca precedent ($1.5B over 15 years) and IRGC expectations ($40B annually) illustrates why Oman's voluntary-fee framing cannot bridge the divide. Iran's demand is not about legitimate maritime services; it is about unilateral control revenue.

Iranian military officials have pushed for a toll system that could generate as much as $40 billion a year, a figure that exceeds Iran's entire annual oil-export revenue under pre-war sanctions. This is not a sustainability question; it is a leverage question.

The chart visualizes the structural asymmetry: hardliners have consolidated around a maximalist position (mandatory toll, no nuclear compromise without strait control), while pragmatists are isolated in the 40-50 range, with the new Supreme Leader's position explicitly conditional rather than committed.

Counterarguments And Blind Spots

This section identifies the most probable ways this assessment could prove inaccurate:

Mojtaba's Authority May Be Stronger Than Succession Uncertainty Suggests: His absence from funeral ceremonies could reflect deliberate positioning rather than weakness. If Mojtaba has privately secured commitments from key IRGC commanders and Assembly of Experts members, he could move decisively to enforce a final agreement, rendering the hardliner pressure campaign ineffectual. This would elevate Scenario A's probability.

The IRGC Attacks May Signal Negotiating Leverage Rather Than Loss of Control: An alternative reading of the July 7 strikes is that pragmatists orchestrated them as a way to demonstrate to hardliners that Iran has leverage worth defending, thereby creating political space to negotiate from a position of demonstrated strength rather than capitulation. Under this interpretation, the attacks are a tactical signal meant to reset hardliner expectations, not a sign of control fracture. This would stabilize the negotiation timeline.

Trump's Binary Threshold May Be Softening Faster Than Public Rhetoric Suggests: Private US-Iran backchannel communications may have already produced Iranian commitments to specific attack-prevention measures that allow Trump to claim a public victory without requiring explicit formal statements. Mediators have political incentive to broker a quiet understanding that preserves both sides' negotiating room.

Oman's Proposal May Succeed as Institutional Mechanism Despite Public Positioning: The July 9 Oman statement reaffirming free navigation principles could be designed to maintain credibility with the US/GCC, while private Oman-Iran negotiations establish a compulsory fee structure that Iran can claim as a victory and Oman can mediate as a "voluntary" arrangement through creative framing. The legal ambiguity may be intentional rather than an oversight.

Shipping Demand May Prove More Resilient Than Current Traffic Suggests: The 58% post-strike traffic collapse may reflect a temporary shock from uncertainty rather than a fundamental shift in shipper risk tolerance. If no additional major attacks occur over the next 10 days and mediators announce progress toward a final agreement, traffic could recover to 85%+ of pre-crisis levels by August, signaling renewed shipper confidence and reinforcing pragmatist arguments that the ceasefire framework is viable.

Indicators To Watch