Iran Gives Washington Six Conditions for Reopening Hormuz: Negotiating Position—or Terms the U.S. Can Never Accept?
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council says Hormuz will remain closed until Washington ends regional military operations, removes forces near Iran, lifts sanctions, releases frozen assets, pays war damages and stops threatening Tehran.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has issued a sweeping set of conditions that it says the United States must meet before the Strait of Hormuz can fully reopen.
The demands were presented publicly by senior Iranian security official Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr and carried by Iranian state media.
They include an end to U.S. threats and insults against Iran, a permanent end to what Tehran calls aggression against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq, withdrawal of U.S. naval and air forces from areas surrounding Iran, compensation for war damage, removal of sanctions and unconditional release of frozen Iranian assets.
The statement sharply raises the price of a final agreement.
Washington is unlikely to accept all six demands.
That may be the point.
Negotiating positions are often designed to establish maximum claims before parties trade concessions.
Iran wants Hormuz treated not as an isolated shipping issue but as leverage over the entire regional security relationship.
The United States wants the opposite.
Washington argues that freedom of navigation through an international strait should not be hostage to sanctions, Gaza, Yemen or the deployment of U.S. forces elsewhere.
That difference explains why technical talks with Oman can advance while the political settlement remains distant.
Iran and Oman can agree on coordinates, traffic lanes and mine clearance.
They cannot, by themselves, resolve whether American forces withdraw from the Gulf or whether Washington pays reparations.
Iran’s list combines achievable and highly difficult demands.
The release of some frozen assets could form part of a settlement.
Selective sanctions relief is also possible.
Limits on threats or attacks can be expressed through a ceasefire.
A permanent end to U.S. military action across Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq is much broader because Washington does not control all actors in those theatres and would not normally accept a blanket commitment never to use force.
The demand for compensation is equally contentious.
Iran says two wars of aggression caused enormous destruction.
The United States and Israel argue their operations responded to Iranian threats, missile programmes and nuclear concerns.
Any reparations mechanism would imply legal and political responsibility that Washington is unlikely to accept easily.
The call for U.S. military withdrawal reaches the heart of American Gulf strategy.
The United States maintains bases and naval forces to protect allies, deter Iran and secure shipping.
Iran views those same forces as encirclement and as infrastructure that enabled attacks on its territory.
Each side defines the other’s security measures as aggression.
The domestic audience also matters.
Iranian leaders need to show that months of war, casualties and economic pain produced something more than a return to the pre-war status quo.
Reopening Hormuz for minor technical concessions could be portrayed by hardliners as surrender.
A maximal list helps the leadership argue that it is negotiating from strength.
It also creates a risk.
If the demands are politically impossible, they can become a formula for permanent closure and economic self-harm.
Iran’s own economy is under severe pressure from the U.S. blockade, collapsing oil revenue and wartime disruption.
Hormuz therefore gives Iran leverage while simultaneously hurting Iran.
The statement’s claim that these are the demands of people who have remained in the streets for 160 days should also be treated as state political language rather than an independently measured national consensus.
Iranian society contains hardliners, pragmatists, opposition groups and people exhausted by war.
The Supreme National Security Council speaks for the state, not automatically every citizen.
The open question is whether the six conditions are the opening bid before compromise—or evidence that the technical Hormuz deal is being overtaken by a political confrontation too broad for Oman to mediate.