U.S., Iran Prepare for Talks on Strait of Hormuz

Who Controls Hormuz?

U.S. and Iranian officials are preparing to hold indirect talks in Qatar on Tuesday and Wednesday following days of tit-for-tat strikes that threatened to unravel the two sides’ precarious cease-fire. Rather than focus on Iran’s nuclear program, though—as was supposed to be the priority of this week’s negotiations—the parties plan to discuss ongoing security concerns in the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier this month, the United States and Iran signed a preliminary peace agreement that included a provision to reopen the strategic waterway. However, the deal’s vague wording, which states that Tehran “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days,” has left room for interpretation and has fanned the flames of further conflict.

The latest result has been four straight days of reignited hostilities. On Thursday, an Iranian drone damaged a Singapore-flagged container ship off the coast of Oman. In response, U.S. forces launched retaliatory strikes targeting Iranian missile and drone storage sites as well as coastal radar facilities. Then, over the weekend, Iran attacked another vessel in the Strait of Hormuz and later claimed to have targeted U.S. military bases in Bahrain and Kuwait.

U.S. officials told Axios on Sunday that the two sides had agreed to halt their attacks. Still, this flare-up in violence appears to have dashed hopes that the critical thoroughfare could effectively reopen for commercial traffic in the near term.

According to Kpler, a maritime data tracking firm, the number of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz dropped from 74 vessels on Wednesday to just 22 vessels on Sunday. And a plan announced last week by the International Maritime Organization to evacuate some 600 ships currently stranded in the strait remained paused on Monday.

The United States has pushed commercial vessels to use a route that hugs the Omani coast and avoids Iranian waters. However, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stressed on Sunday that Tehran is solely responsible for managing the strait and that “any attempt to adopt new or separate arrangements from those currently being pursued by the Islamic Republic will only lead to further complications, delays in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and an increase in tensions.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi reiterated this stance on Monday, warning that the “situation is sensitive and complex” and denouncing a French initiative, announced that day, to work with Oman to demine the strait.

Meanwhile, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi confirmed on Monday that Oman and Iran are in talks about potentially charging service-related fees for commercial ships using the waterway. These services could include pollution prevention, navigational assistance, water safety measures, and other incident preparedness aid. However, he insisted that it would not be a charge for transit. “This is internationally forbidden, and we are abiding by these rules,” Albusaidi said.

If this week’s talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are successful, then the global economy could begin to move toward recovery from the months-long war. Oil prices inched higher on Monday following the recent spate of attacks, with Brent crude ticking up almost 1 percent to more than $73 a barrel for September deliveries and West Texas Intermediate crude rising more than 1 percent to roughly $70 a barrel.

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The World This Week

Tuesday, June 30: A two-day Mercosur leaders’ summit concludes in Paraguay.

European Union foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas concludes a two-day trip to Turkey.

Wednesday, July 1: Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi begins a three-day trip to India.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. begins a four-day trip to Canada.

The deadline to complete a joint review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement is set to expire.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visits Azerbaijan.

Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin hosts European Council President António Costa.

Kallas begins a two-day trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Thursday, July 2: Algeria holds legislative elections.

Von der Leyen visits Armenia.

Saturday, July 4: Iran begins a three-day funeral ceremony for former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

What We’re Following

Getting out. Protesters have told all undocumented foreigners in South Africa to leave the country by Tuesday ahead of planned anti-immigrant rallies that day. Although organizers claim that the event will be peaceful, many locals fear that the march will turn violent.

Thousands of migrants have fled South Africa in recent weeks, as mobs accuse them of committing crimes and taking away jobs and resources from the country’s citizens. Last month, demonstrators set fire to more than 50 shacks in the South African harbor town of Mossel Bay, killing at least five Mozambique nationals. In response, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa vowed to deploy envoys across the continent to tackle xenophobic attacks.

Pretoria “will not tolerate any attempts to destabilize the country by anyone, whether marching or otherwise,” Ramaphosa said ahead of Tuesday’s march.

Yet initial efforts to quell the violence have done little to ease concerns. With thousands of people racing to leave South Africa before Tuesday, consulates and foreign missions have become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of paperwork. Some foreign nationals have resorted to sleeping outside government offices while waiting to leave the country for fear of being targeted in their homes.

Rebalancing power. Andy Burnham, the top contender to replace outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, outlined his 10-year plan for government on Monday with a speech promising radical change. “I am going to give Britain the circuit breaker it needs by building a ​more collaborative politics in Westminster, by taking power out of the center and putting it in the hands of the people and places who can use it best,” Burnham said in what he described as the country’s “biggest rebalancing of power.”

The former Greater Manchester mayor—wearing a T-shirt under his suit jacket—vowed to focus on domestic issues, such as reindustrialization, control of water, and high costs of living. He pledged to give regional governments greater authority, and he proposed kick-starting the biggest social housing building program since the years following World War II.

Labour lawmakers praised Burnham’s speech, just days after pushing Starmer out of office. “Finally, some hope again,” said former Health Minister Wes Streeting, who has decided not to challenge Burnham for the seat despite resigning from Starmer’s cabinet last month to do so.

High-risk temperatures. Italy and the Balkan states became the latest countries hit by Europe’s record-setting heat wave on Monday. Italian authorities have issued a red alert for 22 cities, Serbian officials estimate that temperatures could reach 102 degrees Fahrenheit, and Croatian and Albanian firefighters are working to contain wildfires that broke out over the weekend.

But the heat wave’s move east has not brought relief to Western Europe, where only around 20 percent of homes have air conditioning. France’s public health agency on Sunday reported that roughly 1,000 excess deaths had been recorded between Wednesday and Saturday amid the extreme heat; of those, 85 percent were people aged 65 or older. That toll also included at least 74 people across France who have drowned since June 18 while trying to escape the heat.

“Right now 150 million people ​are living under extreme heat, hundreds have died, schools are shut, grids are buckling,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Sunday. “Driven by climate change and global warming, the phenomenon of the ‘once-in-a-generation’ heatwave is now occurring nearly annual[ly]. We were warned.”

Odds and Ends

More than 270 years after their discovery, papyrologists can now read parts of some 400 ancient scrolls burned during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago. Using machine learning methods, researchers last Thursday unveiled roughly 230 columns of text in papyri that are believed to have once belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law in the coastal Italian town of Herculaneum. The findings include the existence of several new chapters of On Gods by philosopher Philodemus of Gadara; until recently, On Gods was believed to be a one-chapter work.