The Hormuz Talks Collapsed Before They Began, a Ship Was Hit Off Qeshm, and Trump Said the US Could Keep Iran's Oil

The one piece of diplomacy that had a date attached to it this month has lost the date. Oman's foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, announced on Saturday that Monday's meeting in Salalah between Iran, Iraq and the Gulf states on the Strait of Hormuz was postponed "in the interests of consensus". No new date was given. The Iranian foreign ministry said the delay came "at the request of some regional countries", and confirmed that Saudi Arabia had submitted amendments. By Sunday morning it was clear why the language mattered.

What Salalah was for

The meeting was to turn the Iran-Oman corridor arrangement, which we set out last week, into something the region signed. Ships in would use a lane through Iranian waters, ships out a lane mostly through Omani waters, and the parties would settle the precise maps and a toll to fund navigation, environmental protection and rescue. Riyadh's objection, as Al Jazeera's analysis reports from Axios and CNN, was that the proposal's wording would "establish a new status quo which would be unacceptable to Riyadh": a strait that Iran manages, with fees and permits, endorsed by its neighbours. Bahrain, which has absorbed more Iranian fire than any Gulf state since February, refused to attend at all and called the forum appeasement; its position is that Hormuz must be open without discrimination, fees or permits. Iran says it will now decide with Oman "how to announce or register the agreement" bilaterally. Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group told Al Jazeera that Tehran wants regional buy-in so that Washington cannot dismiss the arrangement as "an Iranian diktat", and that Washington is unlikely to lift its blockade either way.

Qeshm

At about five on Sunday morning, in the water between Hengam Island and the village of Shib Deraz off the south coast of Qeshm, an Iranian cargo vessel was hit. One person was killed and four wounded, according to Iranian state media, and the UK Maritime Trade Operations centre reported a vessel struck by a projectile in the strait with a severe fire aboard and local authorities evacuating the crew. The governor of Qeshm blamed a "terrorist enemy" and no Iranian official has named one. Asked in Ireland whether the United States had struck the ship, Trump said: "I don't want to say."

Keep the oil

The president spent the weekend at the Irish Open, and his remarks there will travel further than the postponement. He said the United States could stay in Iran and "keep the oil", drawing the parallel himself with the American push to take control of a fifth of Venezuela's reserves, and he said the price of gasoline would "drop like a rock" once the war ended, which he still expects to be this year and possibly just after November's midterm elections. Reuters and Al Arabiya carried the remarks. He also brushed aside a report that Iran had obtained satellite images of the Jordanian base attacked in July, in which three American soldiers died, from Chinese entities.

Read together, the weekend's three stories describe a war in which the diplomacy is being conducted about the strait rather than about the war. The Gulf states cannot agree among themselves whether an Iranian-run corridor is a relief or a surrender. Ships are being hit inside Iranian waters by someone who will not say so. And the American president is talking about the oil under Iran, not the oil that is not getting out of it. For the Gulf economies, which are already adjusting, that is not a reassuring combination.