Oman and Iran took a concrete diplomatic step over the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday: Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al-Busaidi spoke by telephone with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and the two reviewed discussions aimed at reaching understandings that would resume navigation through the strait “without obstacles,” Oman's Foreign Ministry said in a post on X, carried by ANI. The state-run Oman News Agency, reported by Bloomberg, said the understandings would be practical, political and technical, based on arrangements to ensure the safety of maritime corridors and on joint technical mechanisms to keep international trade and energy flowing.

Source: ANI, Nov 5; Oman News Agency via Bloomberg, Nov 5

The two ministers “affirmed the importance of transitioning from a phase of de-escalating tensions to a phase of consolidating sustainable understandings,” the Omani ministry said — language that goes a step beyond the calls for calm of recent weeks, because it describes building durable arrangements for the waterway rather than only pausing the fighting around it. The ministry said the understandings should also prevent further confrontations in the region.

Source: Oman Foreign Ministry via ANI, Nov 5

The call was one of three Araghchi held on Thursday. According to Iranian state broadcaster IRIB, he also spoke separately with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan and with Qatar's Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani — the two other Gulf capitals most involved in trying to end the US–Israeli war on Iran and reopen the strait. No readouts of those two calls had been published by Thursday afternoon.

Source: IRIB via ANI, Nov 5

The diplomacy ran in parallel with another day of reported fires in the strait itself — Iran's navy said two more tankers hit mines east of Hormuz on Thursday afternoon. Read: Iran's navy reports two more tankers on fire east of Hormuz

Oman is not a bystander in this waterway. The strait lies between Iran and Oman, and Muscat is a coastal state on its southern shore as well as the region's most practised mediator — it hosted the indirect US–Iran contacts of earlier rounds and has kept channels to Tehran open through the war. The Iranian government's account of Thursday's call said the two ministers exchanged views on the regional situation and on diplomatic initiatives aimed at preventing further escalation, as Qatar continued mediating between Washington and Tehran.

Source: The Diplomatic Insight, Nov 5; MENAFN, Nov 5

What stands in the way

Tehran's stated position has not changed. Iran said on Monday that it remained in contact with the United States through intermediaries, but that reopening the strait depended on Washington lifting its naval blockade of Iranian ports — a condition the United States has not accepted. Washington and Tehran did sign a memorandum of understanding on freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz on June 18, but putting it into effect stalled over disagreements about security arrangements, and the strait has remained effectively closed to shipping Tehran calls unauthorised since early in the war.

Source: MENAFN, Nov 5; The Diplomatic Insight, Nov 5

The stakes are visible in the oil market. Brent crude rose about 3 percent on Thursday to around $97.56 a barrel by mid-afternoon in London, Reuters reported, after plunging more than 8 percent on Wednesday to its lowest since August 31 — traders are pricing, day by day, whether the war ends or the strait stays shut. Before the war the strait carried about a fifth of the world's oil supply; Gulf exports have recovered to roughly three-quarters of pre-war levels, at higher cost and under constant threat.

Source: Reuters, Nov 5

For the lakhs of Punjabi and Indian workers across the Gulf — in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman itself — and for the Indian seafarers who crew Gulf shipping, a durable Hormuz arrangement is not an abstraction: it decides fuel and food prices at home, freight costs, flight routes and how safely ships move through the waters many of them work on. Thursday's call produced no announced agreement, timetable or US response, and Iran's parallel warnings that the strait remains closed to uncoordinated traffic were repeated the same day.

Source: Awaaz Punjab analysis of the reported positions

What happens next

The Oman channel is now the one to watch alongside Qatar's mediation: if the “technical mechanisms” language turns into a named proposal — a coordinated transit corridor, an inspection or notification regime, a timetable — it would be the first concrete Hormuz framework since the June memorandum stalled. Until Washington responds or Tehran drops the blockade condition, the strait stays in its current state: formally shut by Iran to uncoordinated traffic, with tankers still being reported on fire inside it.