US options 'limited' as Iran and Oman approach deal on Strait of Hormuz: Laura Tingle | ABC NEWS

Iran's foreign ministry says a joint announcement with Oman on a new route through the Strait of Hormuz is on the verge of being finalised.US President Donald Trump and other senior American officials have been talking up the possibility of an imminent deal.However, it is unclear whether Washington would accept any arrangement in which Tehran maintains control of the Strait.Our Global Affairs Editor Laura Tingle joins me now.Very good morning to you, Laura.So Iran and Oman, it's reported that they have agreed on these coordinates of the route through the strait.

Have we been at this arrangement before or is this one more promising?

I think it's different this time round, mostly because it's really not being driven by the United States and in fact the United States seems to be a passive sort of receiver of whatever this deal is. I think the fact that Oman is involved makes it much more complicated for the Americans to knock it back, not that they've got all that much say in it.But I think the interesting things here are that there is now a clear sign that there's an agreement on Iran controlling what shipping goes into the Gulf and Oman controlling the shipping coming out.Now, there's been a lot of focus until now on the question of whether there'd be fees charged and that's still up for negotiations.But one of the other really crucial issues here of course is Americans won't be able to get any of their naval assets into the Gulf, where a lot of their bases in the region are sited, if this is the arrangement.

I'll get on to what the US response might be if they do have any vulnerabilities as a result of that, but what are the conditions that you know of that have been tied up with what you know of this deal so far?

Well, it's still a little bit unclear.Essentially, the idea is that what the Iranians are saying and what Reuters has been reporting out of theGulf is that there would be these two channels in each direction as I've just said.There is a discussion about fees still going on with Iran and Oman talking about different levels of fees of 7 % of the value of goods or 3 % in the case of Oman but that's still unclear and it is possible that there won't be fees.There's also talk that this would only be initially a short -term arrangement and the Iranians have said this would be dependent on unnamed third parties but effectively the US removing its blockade of the strait.

So given if that might be one of the conditions, no third party interference, how do you expect the US will respond to this?

Well, I think that their options are increasingly limited.We're seeing sort of strangely in Ukraine at the moment signs of just how desperate the situation is in terms of military hardware.Ukraine's run out of Patriot missiles essentially to defend itself.There are reports in the last couple of days that the US has actually really used up a lot of its stockpiles of offensive weapons as well.Donald Trump is desperate to get the strait reopened with the midterm elections coming in and the only question really becomes how does he somehow try to make this look like it's not the humiliating defeat and the huge change in the geostrategic balance that it really is.

Could this Iran -Oman deal be a permanent solution or is it a stopgap?

Well it could end up being permanent.I think the other crucial determinant in that will be the role of the other Gulf countries.I mean we've got them talking about sort of these sort of secondary rounds of sort ofof such an agreement, where they're saying, well look, if there's going to be inspections of cargoes, we should be involved in it.So it's almost becoming a Gulf -wide agreement with Iran.And if that's the case, it may end up being that it suits everybody for that to stay in place.