Temporary Hormuz solution deferred as Iran-Arab summit falls through
Saudi Arabia asked for the meeting to be postponed, but Tehran says it will continue to seek a regionally backed bill.
Tehran, Iran – Another attempt to clinch a deal between Iran and Oman to restore some traffic to the Strait of Hormuz has been set back by a lack of regional consensus on the future of the waterway.
Officials from Iran, Iraq and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations – minus objecting Bahrain – were scheduled to meet in Oman’s port city of Salalah on Monday to confer on new temporary routes in the Strait of Hormuz amid Tehran’s ongoing hot-and-cold war with the United States.
On Sunday night, the region’s officials announced the postponement of the meeting, without giving a new date. None of the stakeholders gave any indication that the postponement was directly linked to recent Houthi and Iraqi militia attacks on Saudi Arabia.
“The broader the regional buy-in, the harder it becomes for the US to dismiss the arrangement as an Iranian diktat,” he told Al Jazeera.