Iran's top security body has handed Washington a sweeping list of eight conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, demands that range from a full military withdrawal to war reparations, with a critical negotiation deadline now days away.
Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and a commander in the Revolutionary Guard, declared through Iran's state news agency IRNA that the strait will not reopen until the United States "corrects its behavior." The demands, reported by the Daily Mail, amount to a maximalist opening position from a regime that has kept one of the world's most important shipping lanes largely shut since the conflict began in late February.
Zolghadr reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, and his list carries the weight of the regime's highest decision-making body. The demands include permanently ending the war, halting the U.S. naval blockade, withdrawing American military forces from the region, lifting all sanctions on Tehran, unfreezing Iranian assets, paying reparations for war damage, ending threats and hostile rhetoric, and ceasing military action against Iran's allies.
The timing is not accidental. A 60-day negotiation period for a final deal on the strait is set to expire in just over a week, though it could be extended. Oman has been brokering a temporary arrangement with Khamenei that would create designated shipping lanes through the strait without tolls, a deal expected to be jointly announced by Iran, Oman, the United States, and the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization, AP News reported.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Tehran was close to reaching an agreement on navigation, "specifically the determination of a transit route." But the SNSC's public demands make clear that any temporary corridor deal is just that, temporary. Full reopening, in Tehran's telling, requires Washington to capitulate on virtually every front.
Oman said discussions were ongoing "in a positive and constructive atmosphere" and condemned attacks on ships in the strait. That diplomatic language papered over a volatile reality on the water.
On the same day Iran published its conditions, the United Arab Emirates said one of its ships was targeted by an Iranian missile in the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel belonged to ADNOC, Abu Dhabi's state oil company, and Breitbart reported no casualties resulted, but the attack marked one of more than a dozen strikes on ADNOC vessels since the conflict began in February.
The pattern is familiar. Tehran talks about corridors and conditions while its missiles keep flying. A fragile truce brokered by Pakistan collapsed last month after Iranian attacks on tankers. Eighteen American troops have died since the conflict started, and the strait has remained closed for much of that time, strangling global shipping through the waterway that normally carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil.
The Iranian missile strikes in the strait have been a recurring feature of the conflict, raising the cost of any diplomatic resolution and testing American patience.
U.S. Central Command has redirected 53 commercial vessels through the strait, Fox News reported, while the American blockade continues to cost Iran hundreds of millions of dollars. That economic pressure is the strongest card Washington holds, and Iran's demand list reads like an attempt to trade the strait's reopening for the removal of every source of that pressure at once.
The rhetoric from Tehran has matched the scope of the demands. The New York Post quoted Zolghadr as saying:
"The Supreme National Security Council will never back down, neither in war nor in negotiations."
IRGC General Hossein Mohebbi reinforced the message: "Whenever the American side accepts the conditions of the Islamic Republic of Iran and abandons its interventionist approach, the conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz will certainly be provided."
Beyond the six demands explicitly detailed in reporting, Iran is also seeking permanent strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz itself, including the ability to impose tolls of up to seven percent on vessels transiting the waterway. That demand, effectively turning a shared international passage into an Iranian toll road, goes well beyond anything the temporary Oman-brokered corridor contemplates.
The conflict's cost in American lives has been mounting steadily, and the SNSC's demands offer no acknowledgment of the attacks that provoked the U.S. response in the first place.
While Iran stacked conditions on the table, the administration was simultaneously contending with reports of an internal clash over military readiness. The Washington Post reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump had a showdown at Camp David last Friday over hidden munitions shortages. Hegseth, described as one of the loudest early advocates for striking Iran, having assured Trump the operation would be "a swift and relatively painless win", reportedly insisted he bore no blame and accused his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, of presiding over the missile shortfall and failing to keep the president fully briefed.
NBC News reported that Trump called the 66-year-old Feinberg, a billionaire who chaired Trump's Intelligence Advisory Board during the first term, on Friday evening and threatened to fire him. Feinberg then summoned top Pentagon brass to a late-night crisis meeting.
At the weekend, Trump declared U.S. forces "locked and loaded" for fresh strikes against Iran, then backed down after appeals from Gulf allies. Trump denied any shortage of American munitions, insisting interceptors were reaching American bases as needed. But unnamed commanders told reporters that shortages of long-range guided missiles and air defense interceptors were among the reasons the president held back from further large-scale strikes, and that the interceptor crunch was now changing targeting decisions on the ground.
The administration pushed back hard. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the reports fabricated:
"This is 100% fake news. Literally never happened. And President Trump has the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth."
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell joined the denial, insisting Hegseth "did not mislead anyone" about weapons stocks and never pointed the finger at Feinberg. Trump himself posted on Truth Social:
"The 'leakers' of these treasonous statements are being hunted down. Long term jail sentences will be sought!"
The president's focus on leaks rather than the substance of the shortage claims will not satisfy critics, but the White House and Pentagon have been unequivocal in their denials. The dispute remains unresolved in the public record, the Washington Post and NBC News stand behind their reporting, and the administration stands behind its rejections.
Iran, meanwhile, has its own history of internal blame-shifting over the strait attacks, making the diplomatic landscape on both sides murky at best.
Trump claims talks with Tehran are restarting. Iran denies it. That contradiction sits at the center of a conflict where every diplomatic gesture arrives alongside a missile strike or a new ultimatum.
The Oman-brokered temporary corridor remains the most realistic near-term outcome. Gulf Cooperation Council members have endorsed it. But Iran's public demand list, withdrawal, reparations, sanctions relief, frozen assets, strategic control of the strait, and a permanent end to military operations, reads less like a negotiating position and more like a list of surrender terms directed at the world's dominant military power.
Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz sits at less than ten percent of pre-war levels. Global energy markets feel every week the waterway stays closed. And escalatory incidents keep stacking up, narrowing the space for any deal.
The administration has pulled back from planned strikes before in response to diplomatic appeals, a pattern that shows restraint but also signals to Tehran that pressure works. With the 60-day window closing, the next week will test whether Iran's demands are an opening bid or a wall.
A regime that fires missiles at commercial shipping while demanding reparations for a war it helped provoke is not negotiating in good faith. Washington should treat the list accordingly.
