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Iran’s Seven Conditions Still Block a Hormuz Reopening

Iran’s security chief said Hormuz stays closed until the U.S. meets seven conditions. Our table lists each demand beside official energy data.

ByPeter
Bow and flight deck of USS Dwight D. Eisenhower during a Strait of Hormuz transit
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower transits the Strait of Hormuz on July 21, 2016. Photo: U.S. Navy / J. Alexander Delgado, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

MOSCOW / WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, 2026 — Iran’s security chief said in Moscow that the Strait of Hormuz will stay closed, and that talks with the United States will not go forward, until Washington carries out seven conditions Tehran has already announced. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, delivered a message from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. Al Jazeera reported his remark as: “On the issue of diplomacy, we have announced seven conditions to the Americans. As long as they do not execute our seven conditions, we will neither open the Strait of Hormuz nor have negotiations.”

The same report, citing a senior Iranian official who spoke to Reuters, said Iran had offered the United States a new nuclear and peace proposal through Qatari mediators, to be discussed only after those seven demands are met. The United States is examining the proposal, Reuters reported, according to Al Jazeera. Washington, the same account said, has insisted that a deal on Iran’s nuclear capacity must be part of any ceasefire before wider peace talks restart.

President Donald Trump told reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday that the United States may have to “destroy the rest” of Iran and that people will “know soon enough” if he acts, Al Jazeera reported. On Friday, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani discussed diplomatic efforts with Trump by phone. The Qatari Emiri Diwan said the two reviewed Doha-led mediation aimed at “a comprehensive agreement that puts an end to the crisis,” according to the same report.

The seven conditions, as reported

Rezaei first called the U.S. response “not convincing” on Tuesday. In a post on X quoted by Anadolu Agency, he said the United States “must respond fully and explicitly to Iran’s seven conditions and fulfill them. Only then will the Strait of Hormuz be reopened.” Anadolu listed the reported conditions in the table below. Al Jazeera, writing on Friday, named the lifting of sanctions, the unfreezing of assets and an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports in and around the strait “among other things,” without publishing a different numbered list.

| # | Condition, as reported by Anadolu Agency | What it would require in practice | |—|—|—| | 1 | A ceasefire across the Middle East | A halt not only around Iran but on other regional fronts | | 2 | Release of Iranian assets frozen abroad | A financial decision by the United States and any other governments holding the funds | | 3 | Lifting of sanctions on Iran’s oil sector | A change in U.S. (and possibly allied) sanctions policy | | 4 | Ending the U.S. naval blockade | An end to the U.S. restrictions on Iranian ports that Al Jazeera said Washington has imposed, and to related naval operations | | 5 | War reparations | A quantified payment, which neither side has publicly detailed | | 6 | Withdrawal of U.S. forces | A pullback of U.S. military forces, without a public Iranian statement of the exact scope | | 7 | Ending threats and interference | A political assurance against renewed pressure or attack |

No public, point-by-point U.S. reply to that list has been released. Rezaei’s description of the American response as “not convincing” is the official Iranian characterization of whatever was conveyed through the Qatari channel.

What official energy data show

The argument is not only diplomatic. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, in the energy-security tables of its Short-Term Energy Outlook, estimated the fall in Strait of Hormuz shipments summarized below. Those figures are EIA estimates based on tanker-tracking analysis. The agency warned that, since the end of February 2026, AIS signals for ships in the strait have been “especially unreliable,” so the 2026 volumes are revised as better information arrives.

| Period | Oil through Hormuz (million barrels a day) | LNG through Hormuz (billion cubic feet a day) | |—|—|—| | 4Q 2025 | 21.6 | 10.5 | | 1Q 2026 | 14.9 | 7.4 | | 2Q 2026 | 4.9 | 0.8 |

A June 3 CRS report on the Gulf states and the Iran conflict cited the International Energy Agency’s pre-war baseline: about 20 million barrels a day, “around 25% of the world’s seaborne oil trade,” transited the strait, “80% destined for Asia.” The same IEA factsheet, as quoted by CRS, said about 93% of Qatar’s and 96% of the UAE’s LNG exports moved through the waterway, representing 19% of global LNG trade.

Markets have already shown how sensitive prices are to even a partial reopening. In a July 15 “Today in Energy” note, EIA wrote that the front-month Brent futures price reached $118 a barrel on April 29 and fell to $72 on June 26. On June 17, the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding that, among other things, sought to resume traffic through the strait. After that signing and an increase in tanker movements, prices generally declined for the rest of the quarter, EIA said, then rose again in the first two weeks of the third quarter after renewed military strikes.

Al Jazeera reported that Iran has granted exemptions from its shipping restrictions to Iraq, Qatar, India and China, and that it continues to tightly control the lanes. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said this week that tankers had hit mines while using “unauthorized routes” near Oman; Al Jazeera noted that maritime organizations have not confirmed the latest incidents.

The diplomatic track around the list

The Moscow meeting added a second audience. Images released by the Kremlin showed foreign-affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov and military-intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov attending Putin’s session with Rezaei, Al Jazeera reported. Rezaei said the two sides discussed construction of gas pipelines from Russia to Iran, according to Iranian state television as cited in that report.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also placed calls to Gulf counterparts, including the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Qatar and Oman, Al Jazeera reported, with several of those governments saying the talks covered de-escalation and, in Oman’s case, the safety of passage through the strait.

The two capitals are still describing different first steps. Tehran says the seven conditions must be executed before Hormuz reopens and before negotiations, including on a nuclear proposal sent through Doha, can proceed. Washington, per the account relayed by Al Jazeera, wants nuclear limits inside any ceasefire before broader talks. Trump’s Thursday comment and the Friday call with the Qatari emir sit on top of that disagreement rather than resolving it.

Analysis: why the list matters more than the adjectives

The seven conditions turn a maritime problem into a comprehensive political settlement. A region-wide ceasefire, a U.S. troop withdrawal, reparations, the release of frozen assets, the lifting of oil sanctions and an end to “threats and interference” go well beyond the technical task of letting tankers pass. If Tehran holds to Rezaei’s Moscow formulation, the strait stays closed and formal talks stay off until that whole package is carried out. If Washington holds to the sequencing Al Jazeera described, a nuclear understanding has to be part of any ceasefire before those broader talks begin. Those two opening bids do not meet in the middle on their own.

The energy tables explain the cost of leaving the collision in place. EIA’s series shows oil and LNG moving through the strait at a small fraction of late-2025 volumes by the second quarter of this year. CRS, citing the IEA, had already described how much of Asia’s seaborne oil and of Qatari and Emirati LNG depended on that channel before the war. The June memorandum of understanding produced a visible market reaction, then broke down when fighting resumed. That history is why a new proposal routed through Qatar, and a new set of calls among Gulf foreign ministers, will be judged by whether they change the sequence, not by whether they keep the channel open.

The next public tests are narrow. Watch whether Washington answers the seven points in writing, whether Doha describes any narrowing of the list, and whether EIA’s next Short-Term Energy Outlook, due Nov. 10, shows Hormuz volumes moving back toward the late-2025 baseline or remaining near the second-quarter trough.

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