Iran Invokes MOU to Require Hormuz Coordination, Threatens Route Halt

Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Friday that safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz cannot be guaranteed without coordination with Iran — and invoked the memorandum of understanding signed with the United States as the legal basis for that requirement. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi posted to X that failure to coordinate passage with Tehran could result in “the suspension of the designated parallel route,” Middle East Eye reported.

The statement arrived on the first full business day after an unidentified projectile struck a cargo vessel in the strait on Thursday evening, with the United Nations pausing its mass transit plan directly in response. It is the clearest senior-official articulation yet of Iran’s interpretation of the MOU: not that the agreement describes Iranian cooperation with international transit, but that it affirmatively requires vessels to coordinate with Tehran before transiting.

The MOU as Contested Authority

The argument Gharibabadi advanced Friday differs from the IRGC’s Thursday posture in a significant way. The Revolutionary Guards warned Thursday morning that vessels navigating without prior IRGC authorization would face consequences — a military-channel assertion. Gharibabadi’s statement shifts the claim to the diplomatic register: this is not an Iranian unilateral position, he argued, but what Tehran understands the signed agreement to require.

International maritime law does not recognize the right of any coastal state to condition innocent passage through internationally navigable straits on prior notification or coordination. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea holds transit passage through such straits to be a right that littoral states cannot administratively constrain. The United States has held that position throughout the current crisis, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio warning last week that administrative conditions on Hormuz transit would “spread like contagion” to other waterways.

The Versailles MOU’s full text has not been made public. The interpretive gap between what Iran says the agreement requires and what Washington understands it to permit is now — as of Friday morning — one of the framework’s central unresolved questions. That ambiguity will determine whether the Oman working group, whose Friday session status had not been confirmed as of this writing, has any agreed basis to address the Gharibabadi statement.

What “Suspending the Parallel Route” Would Mean

Gharibabadi’s specific threat — that failure to coordinate could result in suspension of “the designated parallel route” — references the alternative shipping corridor established under the UN transit plan that Oman helped coordinate. The parallel route is distinct from the main Hormuz shipping lane. It provided an organized transit path for commercial vessels under the framework’s sixty-day verification period, reducing the risk of uncoordinated interaction with IRGC naval forces while the authorization dispute was being managed. Fifty-seven ships carrying an estimated 1,100 seafarers moved under that organized framework between June 23 and June 25.

Threatening the parallel route is a different pressure lever than physically interdicting vessels in the main lane. A physical interdiction would constitute a clear framework breach susceptible to attribution. Suspending the organized corridor arrangement would represent a withdrawal of Iranian cooperation with the UN-designed transit mechanism — framed, in Gharibabadi’s language, as a consequence of others’ non-compliance rather than an Iranian action. The Oman working group would face immediate pressure to characterize any such suspension, at a moment when its institutional footing is already under strain from Thursday’s unattributed strike.

Gulf Producers Are Not Waiting

The physical oil market offered a different signal Friday. Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf — a near four-month halt — with shipping data confirming the world’s largest oil exporter moving to recapture deferred deliveries, Reuters reported via Middle East Eye. The resumption came explicitly alongside reporting that Thursday’s struck vessel was identified by Reuters as belonging to Taiwan’s Evergreen. Aramco loaded from Ras Tanura despite that incident — a statement, in the physical market, that Saudi Arabia is betting Hormuz transit continues.

Qatar moved differently. QatarEnergy issued a tender Friday for crude loadings structured specifically to avoid the strait: ship-to-ship transfers in offshore waters between Fujairah in the UAE and Sohar in Oman for July and August delivery, Reuters reported via OilPrice. It appears to be the first Qatari crude offering to buyers since the war began February 28. Qatar’s LNG recovery was also accelerating, with as many as eight empty LNG carriers arriving at Ras Laffan to load in the coming days.

The Qatar STS tender is designed to sidestep the coordination question entirely: transfers in UAE and Omani offshore waters do not require vessels to enter the strait. Whether that structure can scale to Qatar’s pre-war export volumes is a separate question. For now it represents a parallel path that does not depend on how Tehran’s interpretation of the MOU is eventually resolved.

Traffic, Confidence, and What to Watch

Vessel tracking data on Friday morning showed two tankers carrying crude moving outbound from the strait and four empty supertankers inbound near the Omani coast, Bloomberg reported via OilPrice. The modest throughput reflects cautious re-engagement rather than restored confidence.

Oil prices continued lower into the week’s close, with August WTI settling around $71.53 — down approximately 5 percent from the prior week — as traders extended bets on more Iranian oil reaching markets while discounting the week’s kinetic incidents. The war risk premium has not fully reasserted itself, but the thesis that the strait’s remaining risk is purely diplomatic rather than kinetic has not reestablished itself either.

Three questions will determine how Friday closes. First: whether the Oman working group meets and whether Gharibabadi’s statement appears on any stated agenda. Second: whether the United States or the working group’s participants respond to Iran’s MOU interpretation publicly or through the framework’s channels. Third: whether the UN indicates any timeline for resuming the paused transit plan. Each of those signals will define how the MOU’s coordination clause is read in the sessions ahead — and whether the parallel route Iran has now threatened remains available to the vessels that have depended on it.

See also: IRGC demands Hormuz authorization — Thursday report · Cargo ship struck in the strait — UKMTO report · Versailles Day Eight — both fronts unresolved