Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, speaking Thursday after meeting with fellow top diplomats from Persian Gulf nations and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said “future arrangements concerning the Strait of Hormuz will not involve imposing any transit fees.”
Al Busaidi “reiterated Oman’s support for the memorandum of understanding signed between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and stressed the importance of ensuring the success of its objectives in pursuit of the desired peace,” the Omani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“He also stressed the importance of restoring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and ensuring its safe and uninterrupted flow. He noted that Oman, as a littoral state of the strait, bears a special responsibility in supporting international efforts to secure maritime navigation in accordance with its responsibilities and obligations under international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” the statement said.
Iran and Oman have said they are creating a new joint mechanism to regulate traffic through the strait – a vital waterway for global energy supplies that was always free and open before the U.S. and Israel launched their joint war on Iran almost four months ago.
In a previous joint statement, the two countries, which have coastlines in the strait, said the new system could have “costs associated,” and Iran has long said it could impose “fees” on commercial vessels to transit the waterway, something the Trump administration has rejected.
“International waterways do not belong to any nation state,” Rubio said earlier in the day at the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Bahrain, where Al Busaidi also gave his remarks. “If in fact we accepted that you can charge money to use an international waterway because it happens to be near your territorial space, well then this will spread throughout the world like a contagion.”
