OPINION: Money before Hormuz is the mistake Riyadh and Abu Dhabi refuse

The seventh day

The blows and the pressure

The countries taking the blows want the pressure to continue.

The ones far away want to sign fast.

Even with American diesel above $200 a barrel in early September, according to the International Energy Agency, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are asking Washington to keep its naval blockade of Iran. Until a deal. Not until a promise.

Meanwhile, crews wait at anchor. Engines idling. The heat of the deck through their soles. The radio crackling out the day’s orders.

A seven-day plan

On September 25, sources cited by Reuters and AFP say Washington and Tehran are discussing a phased deal, in New York.

Before the seventh day, Washington would lift its blockade. Before the seventh day, Washington would lift sanctions on Iranian oil. Before the seventh day, at least US$12 billion in Iranian assets would be unfrozen. Before the seventh day, the guns would fall silent on every front, Lebanon included. Before the seventh day, nothing would yet oblige Tehran to reopen anything.

On the seventh day, the Strait of Hormuz.

Not before.

Money first, the strait on day seven.

The whole deal lives in the order of the days.

What Tehran is offering

The September 24 press conference

On September 24, in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi presented his plan to the press.

He says he passed it to the United States through intermediaries, according to Al Jazeera and the New York Times.

If certain conditions are met, he says, the strait would be open at the end of the seventh day. Then talks would resume.

Then Hormuz. Then the nuclear file.

In that order. No other.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian summed it up on Fox News. It is up to America to choose whether it wants to end this, he said.

The American calendar

Washington and Tehran would both prefer to close a deal before the American midterm elections, according to Reuters’ sources.

They take place on November 3.

A deal before the vote could hold down oil prices and American gasoline, the dispatch notes.

Tehran knows it. It is not only talking about peace. It is talking about the price at the pump.

Tehran knows our calendar better than we do.

What the Gulf is asking

The crown prince and the blockade

On September 25, the Wall Street Journal reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told American officials the blockade had to stay in place. Until Iran is forced to sign a new agreement. Iran International picked up the report.

Emirati officials, according to the same paper, believe the new violence and the attacks on ships show one thing. Tehran is in no hurry to return to diplomacy.

That is a shift. This summer, Riyadh and other Arab capitals were pushing for negotiation. They were even considering a deal that recognized some Iranian influence over Hormuz.

The full paradox

And yet these same Gulf leaders have pressed Washington to de-escalate, the Reuters dispatch reports. They do not want a new war on their soil.

They want the war to stop. They want the strait to reopen. They want the order reversed.

That is not a contradiction. It is a sequence.

I will say it plainly: on this precise point, the order of the steps, they are right.

They want peace. Not peace paid in advance.

The Gulf is not a bloc

Doha carries the messages

One misreading needs avoiding.

The Gulf does not speak with one voice.

Qatar is passing messages between Washington and Tehran in New York, Al Jazeera writes. According to the Wall Street Journal, Qatari mediators are trying to set up a new round of talks in Oman as early as next week.

Doha negotiates. Riyadh hardens. Abu Dhabi doubts.

Manama refuses the table

Bahrain, for its part, refused on September 12 to take part in a ministerial meeting Iran proposed in Muscat on passage through Hormuz, Al Jazeera and AFP report.

Regional security, its foreign ministry said, cannot be preserved through a policy of appeasement. The strait must stay open without discrimination, without fees, without permits.

Without fees. Without permits.

Different voices. One line on the toll.

They agree on nothing, except the toll.

June, already

The June 17 memorandum

This plan is not new.

According to Al Jazeera, it revives the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 between Washington and Tehran, with Pakistan and Qatar mediating.

That text provided for a halt to military operations. A 60-day negotiating period. Waivers for Iranian oil. The return of traffic through the strait.

A few weeks

It collapsed within a few weeks. The reason: disputes over control of navigation, Al Jazeera writes.

Control of navigation. Exactly what is now proposed to be settled on day seven.

June: a memorandum signed. A few weeks later: a memorandum dead. September: the same memorandum, shorter.

Three months. The same text. The same flaw.

The last round of diplomacy is three months old. It failed on the very point now pushed to the end.

Caution, here, is not warmongering.

If the same text comes back with the same flaw…

You do not re-sign, eyes shut, what you watched tear apart.

The strait as a weapon

The first war aim

The Institute for the Study of War, in its September 24 update, assesses Iran’s war aims.

First on the list: winning international recognition of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Not an end to the strikes. Not sanctions relief. Not the nuclear file. Control of the strait.

The transit fees

According to regional sources cited by Reuters, Tehran is reportedly ready to drop its demand for Hormuz transit fees from the main text. And slip it into an annex.

Out of the text. Into the annex.

Gulf states have rejected those fees, the same dispatch reports. Freedom of navigation must be restored, they say. The strait must not become a tool of coercion against them.

A toll slipped into an annex is still a toll.

A power that wants its control recognized does not give a strait back. It lends it.

A strait returned for a fee was never returned.

The strangled ally

The country paying the most

One country pays for this strait more than the others. It is not an enemy of Tehran.

Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi spoke to the New York Times in an interview published on September 21. His country has reportedly lost about 60% of its monthly oil export revenue because of the restrictions in Hormuz. About US$60 billion since the war began, by his account.

Iraq pays in barrels. Iraq pays in public salaries. Iraq pays in hospitals, pensions and schools funded by oil that no longer gets out.

Tehran’s refusal

And here is the detail that turns everything around.

Despite close ties between Baghdad and Tehran, al-Zaidi says, Iran refused to let Iraqi tankers through.

Their goal, he added, is to push up world oil prices, according to the Times.

Baghdad asked. Tehran refused.

Al-Zaidi is looking for other routes: more oil through Turkey, and pipeline projects toward Europe, according to the Times.

The ally is not spared. The ally is used as leverage.

If the Islamic Republic closes Hormuz to Iraq, what will it do with a strait reopened on day seven, with twelve billion in its pocket?

Even its friends pay the toll.

What the blockade has achieved

Zero barrels

The American blockade has a record. It comes with numbers.

On September 19, Admiral Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, made a statement reported by the Anadolu agency. By his account, his forces have supported more than 1 billion barrels of crude leaving the Gulf. They have assisted more than 2,000 commercial vessel transits through the strait.

In the same message, he says Iran has exported “zero barrels.”

Cooper adds that the strait’s main lanes have been cleared of mines, and that the volumes of the past two weeks are the highest in six months, according to Anadolu.

Zero. The word is his.

This is a belligerent speaking. I report it as such.

What the agency confirms

The International Energy Agency, in its September 11 report, notes that American military escorts are protecting flows through Hormuz. Crude losses in the strait have narrowed to just under 45%.

Gulf barrels move under escort. Tehran’s stay at the dock.

This is an act of Donald Trump. On this precise point, it is a good move: real, measurable leverage that depends on no Iranian promise.

The one lever that works is the one they propose to drop first.

What the blockade costs

The global bill

Now, the best objection. It is serious.

The war and the strait cost the entire world. According to the International Energy Agency, world output fell to 100.1 million barrels a day in August. More than 10 million barrels a day remained shut in the Gulf. Gulf exports were running at about 13 million barrels a day, half their prewar level.

Observed global stocks have shrunk by 507 million barrels since February.

Every week of blockade extends that bill. Every week of blockade drains the reserves a little more. Every week of blockade shows up at the pump.

The risk of escalation

Alan Eyre, a former American negotiator on Iran, told Reuters: “The blockade is hurting them.” Rather than softening their position, he added, it is likely to push them toward escalation.

That is the strongest argument. It has a flaw.

Iraq is not under American blockade. Tehran closes the strait to it anyway.

American leverage did not create Iranian coercion. It answers it.

You do not disarm a toll by paying the toll.

The pump and us

What the reader pays

The objection has a second face. Ours.

We pay too.

American diesel topped $200 a barrel in early September, 94% more than before the war, according to the International Energy Agency. Brent was trading around $105, 45% above its prewar level.

Refining margins hit records in the Atlantic Basin, the agency notes.

As early as March, American gasoline had jumped more than 40% and passed $4 a gallon, NBC News reported.

The temptation of a full tank

A tank of gas is an electoral argument. Everyone in Washington knows it. Everyone in Tehran knows it.

And yet a deal that brings down the price of a fill-up in October and reopens the toll booth in December will not have saved us a thing.

I admit I understand the temptation. I look at the price on the sign at the gas station too.

Today’s full tank is not worth tomorrow’s strait.

The Gulf is not disinterested

Barrels under escort

Now for what Riyadh would rather I left out.

As long as the blockade holds, Saudi and Emirati barrels leave under American escort. Iran’s do not. The blockade also suits their market share.

And their September shift follows Iranian attacks on Saudi ships, the Wall Street Journal writes. That is a victim’s position. It is also a competitor’s.

Riyadh loses too

True. And it does not change this: Saudi Arabia was producing 5.97 million barrels a day in August. That is 4.45 million below its target, according to the International Energy Agency.

A country losing more than four million barrels a day has no interest in dragging out the closure. Its interest is that it never comes back.

Riyadh loses too. A lot.

Self-interested, yes. Blind, no.

A witness with a stake can still tell the truth.

Trump’s cards

What the White House says

“Iran is desperate for a deal, President Trump holds all the cards,” a White House official said, according to Reuters.

Another official spoke to Al Jazeera of positive and constructive talks. Washington will not rush, he said.

According to the Wall Street Journal, American officials have also let it be known that Trump has no intention of lifting the maritime embargo.

Trump, for his part, keeps repeating that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, according to Al Jazeera. That is a line. It has no date.

Hold or lift before November

Holding the blockade until a verified reopening: a good move.

Lifting it before day seven to bring gas prices down before November 3: that would be a bad move. It would hand Tehran the money for a promise. It would leave Iraq and the Gulf to pay for what follows.

Dennis Ross, a former negotiator, sees only a 30% chance of a deal before the vote, according to Reuters.

The temptation is there. So is the calendar.

Hold. Verify. Pay afterward.

A deal for November’s gas would cost us the strait by winter.

Speed as the risk

The consensus of speed

The consensus says: sign, fast, and oil will fall.

Let me play devil’s advocate. What if speed is the real risk?

A deal signed in a few days, one that pays first and verifies later, has already been tried. It lasted a few weeks.

The sequence reversed

The reverse exists. The strait first, open and verified. Transits counted. Then the unfreezing, in tranches. Then the sanctions.

Washington wants, according to Al Jazeera, to handle every issue in a single package, the nuclear file included. Tehran wants to separate them: the strait first, the nuclear file later.

Both capitals talk about order. Neither talks about verification.

Fast, yes. Blind, no.

And yet verification is the only step that protects those who pay.

Open, count, then pay.

The crews and the others

At anchor and in Baghdad

There are the crews at anchor. The Iraqi tankers that cannot pass. The civil servants in Baghdad whose pay depends on a blocked barrel.

The crews vote neither in Washington nor in Tehran. They wait to be told when the lane is safe.

And there are the Iranians.

The blockade sharply restricts Iranian trade and increases pressure on the economy, Reuters reports. They are the ones who pay, at the market, for what the regime refuses to give up.

The regime and the people

I do not confuse a people with its regime.

The adversary here is the Islamic Republic. Its Revolutionary Guards. Its decision to turn the strait into a weapon.

According to the Wall Street Journal, as picked up by Arab Times, the Revolutionary Guards have rejected new negotiating formulas.

I admit a worry. That pressure aimed at a regime lands first on those who live under it.

That is a reason to verify faster. Not to pay sooner.

The people pay for the blockade. The regime would pocket the thaw.

Hormuz first

The sequence

Seven days. Twelve billion at least. A strait reopened at the end, on a promise.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi say: not in that order.

They have their reasons, and not all of them are noble. On the order, though, the facts back them. The June memorandum. The Iraqi tankers. The toll slipped into an annex.

Seven days of trust

How many days of trust should be granted, when the last deal died within weeks over the very question of the strait, and who will pay if we get it wrong one more time?

Iraq already knows the answer, in barrels.

Day seven should not be the day we hope. It should be the day we pay, because we have counted the ships.

Hormuz first. The money on day seven.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Reuters and AFP via The Times of Israel — phased Hormuz deal under discussion, September 25, 2026
• International Energy Agency — Oil Market Report, September 11, 2026
• Anadolu — U.S. Central Command statement on the blockade, September 19, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Al Jazeera — Iran’s seven-day roadmap, September 25, 2026
• Iran International, citing the Wall Street Journal — Riyadh and Abu Dhabi want the blockade kept, September 25, 2026
• Arab Times, citing the New York Times — Iraq’s oil losses, September 21, 2026