The Strait of Hormuz will not return to its pre-war status, Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, November 11, adding that the waterway's future would be determined within a seven-point framework proposed by Tehran, Reuters reported. Ghalibaf, who heads Iran's negotiating team, said Iran's priority was peace provided its terms were accepted, and that it did not want the war to continue.

Source: Reuters via BOE Report

"The ball is now in the US's court; it must make a decision and announce it," Ghalibaf said, according to Press TV's report of the interview. He said Tehran had conveyed a clear and reasonable response setting out its conditions through mediators, but Washington had yet to issue a formal or specific reply. He dismissed reports of changes to Iran's negotiating team, saying he remains in charge of the six-member delegation.

Source: Press TV

Ghalibaf set out the conditions Tehran has named: an end to the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, which he called "a brutal act of war under international law"; an end to interference in the Strait of Hormuz; the withdrawal of the additional US forces deployed to the region since the war began; the lifting of sanctions; an end to the war on Iran and what he called the resistance front; and a ceasefire in Lebanon with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory.

On the strait itself, Ghalibaf said its future status should be determined through an understanding between its two coastal states, Iran and Oman, in accordance with international law, and he said Iran had reached an understanding with Oman on the shipping corridor and traffic separation scheme in the strait. That Oman understanding is Ghalibaf's claim: Oman had published no such understanding by Wednesday evening, in the reporting reviewed, and it has not been independently confirmed.

Ghalibaf also said, according to the reports of the interview, that the Americans had visited Moscow and asked President Vladimir Putin to arrange direct negotiations with Iran. Neither the Kremlin nor the White House has confirmed that request. He said Qatar and Pakistan are acting as the main mediators between Tehran and Washington, with Russia, China and other regional countries also working to bring the sides closer, and that mediators had discussed implementing the required measures within two days — but that progress depends on Washington's response.

Ghalibaf's interview came a day after Iran's security chief took a harder public line on the nuclear file and denied that any talks are under way. Read the earlier story: Rezaei says not a single particle of uranium will leave Iran

The two statements together describe Tehran's public position on Wednesday: no negotiations currently under way, in Rezaei's words, and a formal Iranian response already sent and awaiting an American decision, in Ghalibaf's. Ghalibaf said Iran was determined to end the state of "no war, no peace" and establish sustainable deterrence, stressing that this goal did not necessarily have to be achieved through negotiations, and that Tehran remained ready to reach an agreement if Washington honoured its previous commitments and abandoned what he called its excessive demands.

Markets remain sensitive to every signal on Hormuz. Oil prices rose about 2% on Wednesday after Rezaei's uranium statement fed supply worries, Reuters reported, with Brent futures up $2.15, or 2.35%, at $93.64 a barrel by 12:04 p.m. EST and US West Texas Intermediate crude up $1.69, or 1.96%, at $87.73 — lifting prices off the two-month lows hit in the previous session, when US officials had played down the need for further military strikes against Iran.

For the lakhs of Indian and Punjabi workers across the Gulf, the status of Hormuz is not abstract: the strait carries the region's oil and gas trade, and its shipping rules affect ports, energy plants and the jobs around them from Saudi Arabia to Oman. No new impact on Gulf workers was reported on Wednesday in the reports reviewed. What happens next rests on the step Ghalibaf named: a formal United States decision on Iran's response, which Tehran says it is still waiting to receive.