Strait of Hormuz Reopening: Two Routes, 60 Toll-Free Days

The United States, Iran and Oman are finalizing a temporary arrangement that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping for 60 days, with an option to extend, after Iran’s leadership completed its internal approval process on Tuesday, August 4. For Serbia this is not a distant maritime story. Under normal conditions, a fifth of the world’s oil shipments pass through the strait, and the price of crude oil on global exchanges is the first input into the price of fuel at Serbian pumps, into transport costs, and into the bill of every factory that heats its plant.

The arrangement has been under negotiation for weeks and carries three tasks at once: restoring the ceasefire reached in April, resolving the dispute over navigation, and opening space for a broader conversation on Iran’s nuclear program. The first is the most urgent. The strait has been closed since fighting began, when the United States and Israel went to war against Iran on February 28, 2026.

What Would Passage Through the Strait of Hormuz Look Like?

The split is geographic, and quite literal. Ships entering the Persian Gulf would take the northern route, through Iranian territorial waters. Ships leaving toward the Arabian Sea would use the southern route through Omani waters, coordinated with Tehran. Passage fees would not be charged for the first 60 days.

Running alongside it would be work more tangible than any diplomatic formula. In the first 30 days, the parties would clear mines from the main shipping channel, estimated to hold between 70 and 100 of them. Only after clearance would the channel handle two way traffic, under a permanent arrangement still to be negotiated between Iran and Oman.

One number shows how deeply the shutdown has cut into trade. Before the crisis, about 130 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz every day. On Monday, eight got through. On Tuesday, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) reported that a cargo ship had been hit by an unidentified projectile off the coast of Oman, a reminder that a signed paper and an open shipping lane are not the same thing.

The Same Deadline, Counted a Second Time

This is not the first time sixty days has come up. The memorandum the United States and Iran signed on June 17 already provided, in Article 5, for free passage of commercial ships for the same period. The wording was vague enough that the dispute over who controls the strait and which routes ships may use continued right after signing. When we reported that Tehran was still holding onto Hormuz even after Trump announced a deal, exactly these details were missing: the two routes, the deadline for mine clearance, and the question of fees.

US President Donald Trump summed it up to reporters on Tuesday evening, in his own way.

The strait will be open very soon, or it will be hit very hard.

Asked whether a deal was close, he added: “We’ll know within 48 hours.” Washington wanted an announcement as early as Wednesday.

Tehran, meanwhile, refuses to confirm direct talks with the United States and insists it is talking to Muscat instead. Esmail Bagai, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, described those talks as positive. The US special envoy is in regular contact with the foreign ministers of Iran and Oman but does not negotiate directly, so Oman is doing what it has done for years: carrying messages between two capitals that do not officially speak to each other.

Whoever Collects the Toll Controls the Route

The remaining dispute is more precise than it looks. Nobody disputes that ships should pass over the next 60 days. What is disputed is who runs the waterway afterward, and whether Iran is allowed to charge for maritime services. The model Muscat has proposed is borrowed from the Strait of Malacca, where ships voluntarily fund navigation, environmental protection, and search and rescue. The difference is that the three states around Malacca are not under sanctions.

There is also a trap that could sink the arrangement without a single missile fired. If Iran is given responsibility for part of the shipping lanes, shipping companies would have to coordinate with Iranian authorities, which US sanctions forbid without a specific waiver. The deal would therefore have to arrive bundled with a waiver from Washington, or it stays signed and unusable.

For the European market, where the prices Serbia pays are set, a closed Hormuz is a blow that lands alongside the instability in the Red Sea and at Bab el-Mandeb. When both chokepoints are troubled at the same time, the alternative route around Africa lengthens the voyage and pushes up both freight rates and insurance premiums, and that cost does not stop at the coast. Carriers pass it on, all the way to retail.

The 48 hour deadline Trump mentioned on Tuesday evening runs out Thursday evening, and the first 30 days of mine clearance start counting only once the strait formally reopens. Until then, every ship that enters the channel does so at its own risk.