Iranian Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that Iran's seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remains under discussion, adding that the proposal is linked to an end to hostile activities. Araghchi made the remarks in an interview with Iran's official news agency IRNA, on the sidelines of the 52nd session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Baghdad, Iraq. His comments indicate that Tehran's proposal to restore traffic through one of the world's most important energy waterways has not been abandoned, even as its implementation remains contingent on conditions that have yet to be met.
A plan still under discussion
Araghchi's remarks, delivered to IRNA, positioned the seven-day plan as an open proposal rather than a settled arrangement. According to the foreign minister, the plan to reopen the strait is still being discussed, and its progress is tied to a single overarching condition: an end to what he described as hostile activities.
That framing leaves the timeline deliberately open-ended. While the plan carries a seven-day duration, the reported remarks did not specify when that window might begin or what sequence of steps Iran envisions once it does. What the interview does establish is that the proposal remains a live element of Tehran's diplomacy, and that the reopening of the waterway is being presented not as an independent technical measure but as part of a wider de-escalation equation.
The comments were quickly picked up by regional and international outlets, including Ratopati and Khabarhub, which carried the foreign minister's statements as reported to IRNA.
Baghdad sets the diplomatic stage
The setting of the remarks carries its own weight. Araghchi spoke on the margins of the 52nd session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers, a gathering that has brought the foreign ministers of the 57-member organization to the Iraqi capital. Sessions of the council serve as the OIC's principal forum for coordinating positions among member states on political, economic and humanitarian questions, and the Baghdad meeting gives Iran's top diplomat a prominent multilateral platform at a moment when the status of the Strait of Hormuz is the subject of active discussion.
Conducting the interview with IRNA on the sidelines of the session placed Araghchi's message before both domestic and international audiences at a gathering of the Muslim world's senior diplomats. Iraq, which shares a border with Iran and is hosting this year's session, has thus become the backdrop for Tehran's latest public statement on the fate of the strategic waterway.
Why the Strait of Hormuz carries global weight
The focus on the strait reflects its outsized role in the global economy. The Strait of Hormuz lies between Iran to the north and Oman to the south, connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and, beyond it, the open waters of the Arabian Sea. Several facts about the waterway help explain why a reopening plan is being discussed at the foreign-ministerial level:
- A substantial share of the world's seaborne oil, roughly one-fifth by widely cited estimates, passes through the strait, along with significant volumes of liquefied natural gas.
- The passage is barely 33 kilometers wide at its narrowest point, making it one of the world's most sensitive maritime chokepoints.
- Because tanker traffic is channeled through limited shipping lanes, even short disruptions can ripple quickly into global energy prices, insurance costs and supply chains.
A chokepoint at the center of regional tensions
Given that profile, discussions about the strait's status are never merely bilateral. The fact that Iran has framed a reopening plan with a defined seven-day window, and has linked it to the broader security environment, underlines how central the waterway has become to any conversation about regional stability. Energy-importing countries and shipping lines that depend on the route have a direct stake in how the discussions unfold.
Conditions first, reopening later
The decisive element in Araghchi's comments remains the condition he attached: the plan, he said, is linked to an end to hostile activities. By tying the reopening to a cessation of such activities, Iran has placed the proposal's activation outside the realm of purely procedural negotiations, making its progress dependent on developments in the wider regional situation.
Nothing in the reported remarks suggested an imminent start date for the seven-day window. Rather, the message from Baghdad was that the proposal remains on the table and under discussion, as My Republica reported, contingent on a change in conditions.
For now, the reopening of the strait remains a possibility suspended on a single stated condition. The next movement on the seven-day plan will likely depend on whether the hostile activities Araghchi referenced come to an end, and observers of the strategically vital passage will be watching for any sign that the discussions have advanced beyond words.
