Iran Demands Compensation, Troop Withdrawal, and an End to Sanctions, or Hormuz Stays Closed

A large share of the world's oil and gas passes through a narrow strait, and right now almost nothing is moving through it. The Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway before the war, is nearly empty, with the number of passages remaining low. The war that the United States and Israel launched against Iran in February is on hold on paper, but this Saturday showed just how little that means. There is the familiar saying that war is the continuation of politics by other means. In Hormuz, we are now watching the reverse, politics as the continuation of war. Whoever controls the narrowest point controls the valve through which half the world economy breathes, and Tehran has learned just how much pressure can be applied at this one point.

The body in Tehran resembling a politburo, the Supreme National Security Council, declared that the strait would not be reopened until the United States corrected its behavior. The statement was read by its secretary, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who is also a commander of the Revolutionary Guards. America must never threaten Iran again and must permanently end the war against the country and its armed allies in the region. It must also lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports, withdraw its military, fully compensate Iran for war damages, and unconditionally release frozen assets, including lifting the sanctions. These are the demands of a victor, not those of a country whose ports have been blockaded and whose facilities have been hit. Anyone negotiating like this does not want the confrontation to end, but to continue it with a pen instead of a weapon.

There was initially no response from Washington. The United States had insisted on first reaching an acceptable arrangement for Hormuz and then lifting the blockade. The interim agreement signed in June provided for a timetable on sanctions and a plan for compensation as part of a final agreement, while the frozen assets were also supposed to be negotiated. The 60-day deadline expires in just over a week, although it could be extended. What Tehran is demanding now turns the negotiations away from the shipping lane and toward the question of who lost the war. A timetable for sanctions and a compensation plan can only be negotiated as long as both sides recognize the same outcome. Here, neither side does.

The Tehran Symphony Orchestra and its choir perform "Khosoof" ("Lunar Eclipse") at Tehran's Vahdat Hall on August 6, 2026. The work by Iranian composer Mohammad-Saeid Sharifian deals with Ashura and the Battle of Karbala, one of the most important religious events in Shia Islam.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sounded more optimistic. On shipping, particularly a transit route, the sides were close to an agreement, he said, but reopening the strait depended on additional conditions, and the current situation was the result of an American breach of the interim agreement. Two messages on the same day, one full of confidence, the other full of conditions, both coming from the same capital. Iran also said it was close to a separate agreement with neighboring Oman on managing the strait, which runs between the two countries. Oman, the quiet mediator, spoke of a positive and constructive atmosphere while also condemning the attacks on ships. Before the war, Hormuz was considered open water for everyone. Now one side decides who gets through and at what price.

Because the war is not on hold on the water. Early Saturday, a vessel belonging to Abu Dhabi's state-owned oil and gas company ADNOC was attacked while passing through Hormuz, according to the United Arab Emirates, which said Iran fired the missile. No one was injured, while the company gave no details about the location or possible damage. Since the war began in February, however, more than 12 of the company's ships have reportedly been hit by missiles and drones, killing one crew member and injuring 20 others. A British maritime trade monitoring center later reported that a projectile struck a vessel east of the Omani city of Khasab and started a fire that was brought under control. Whether it was the same vessel remained unclear. More than 12 freighters hit in half a year are no longer isolated incidents. They are a permanent state of affairs.

While the old fronts continue to smolder, new alliances are taking shape. On Friday, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed a defense agreement under which an attack on any one of the three countries will be treated as an attack on all of them. It is directed against no one, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said, as long as no country acts with hostility. No common threat is specified in writing. Any country seeking assistance must formally request it, and that assistance can range from intelligence sharing to the deployment of troops. A secretariat is to be established in Saudi Arabia, other countries have expressed interest, and Egypt, a natural partner, is expected to join in the next phase. The old principle that an attack on one is an attack on all is moving onto a new axis, away from the West and toward an order in which the three capitals stand up for one another. Who this is meant to protect and who it is meant to deter remains unspoken, but nobody in the region has to think very long about it.

Elsewhere, an old war is flaring up again. Yemen's military attacked the Iran-backed Houthis in response to their recent attacks in the country's central and eastern regions. Positions and assets belonging to the rebels were struck along several sections of the front, military spokesman Colonel Majid al-Nazili said, without providing further details. The escalation between the Houthis and the recognized government, along with the Saudi-led coalition, threatens to reignite the civil war that a 2022 ceasefire had brought to a halt. The Iran war has reshuffled the cards, and Yemen is the first place where they are falling again.

Only one conflict is moving in the opposite direction. In Turkey, a law aimed at peace with Kurdish insurgents cleared its first hurdle after a committee approved it, and the National Assembly is expected to follow next week. The Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, announced last year that it would lay down its arms and dissolve. The law governs disarmament and the return of some members and will take effect once Turkey's Security Council confirms that the organization has dissolved and surrendered all of its weapons. Since the 1980s, this war has cost tens of thousands of lives, and Turkey and its Western allies designate the PKK as a terrorist organization. That a war may actually end here while new ones begin elsewhere is the only good news of the day, and even that depends on confirmation that has yet to come, like so much else on this day.

So the region stands between two periods. The guns may have fallen silent in some places, but what people imagine as peace is nowhere to be found. It is a ceasefire with an unpaid bill, at the strait and aboard the freighters that continue to burn. A war does not end with the last shot, but with an agreement on the price, and Hormuz is as far from that as it was on the first day. A ceasefire is not peace. It is a pause in which both sides reload, with arguments as well as ammunition. Whoever refuses to pay the price keeps the weapon ready. Until then, the narrow strait remains what it was during the war, a bottleneck the world has to pass through, with one side keeping its hand firmly on it.