ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz could reopen within seven days if the United States agrees to Tehran’s conditions under a proposed seven-day plan.
Attending a two-day 52nd Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Baghdad, Araghchi said a seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, first discussed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) last month, remained viable if the United States agreed to Tehran’s stipulated conditions.
“Our conditions are entirely clear and have been presented to the United States in the form of a seven-day plan,” a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cited him as saying, adding that “if they meet those conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will reopen on the sixth day, and negotiations will begin on the seventh day.”
The seven-day plan came from a meeting on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York last month, where Araghchi outlined Iran’s conditions for reopening the vital waterway. The proposal includes “an immediate lifting of the naval blockade, the immediate release of all frozen Iranian assets, and an end to the war across the resistance movement,” according to the Iranian state media IRNA.
Araghchi’s Sunday’s remarks come amid heightened tensions in the Strait, which has been at the forefront of the US-Iran tensions since the outbreak of the war in late February. Both the US and Iran have imposed tit-for-tat restrictions, considerably reducing maritime activities in the strategic waterway and driving up the price of oil to its highest level since May.
Following Iran’s initial proposal of the seven-day plan, US President Donald Trump told Rudaw late last month, “I reject their proposal. They made a proposal, but I rejected it.”
The proposal was a revival of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in Islamabad in June. While on a shorter timescale, Araghchi’s latest statement seeks the same conditions as those of the MoU. Araghchi further described these conditions as “entirely fair” to reporters after the meeting in Baghdad.
Trump’s latest Truth Social post reiterates a similarly hostile approach to meeting Iran’s conditions. Referring to Iran, the US President stated Sunday that “they have been systematically destroyed, both Militarily and Financially, and unless they change their ways, rapidly, we will soon finish the job.”
