Welcome to this week’s Fortune Gulf Brief. We’ll be covering:
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- Fortune Exclusive: The inside track on the UN-backed plan to reopen Hormuz
- Saudi Aramco’s war windfall: Profits surge 33%
- Saudi economy stumbles, but oil windfall softens the blow
- Oman accelerates Vision 2040 with $1.9 billion project blitz
- U.S. backs UAE chip champion with $300 million investment
- And the three things we enjoyed reading this week
Another week, another cycle of conflicting rhetoric and mixed messages on the U.S.-Iran conflict.
Late on Sunday, Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked for time to complete a deal that would lead to “the Immediate, Complete and Total” reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump added that negotiations with Tehran are set to begin on Monday after he decided to halt a plan for the U.S. to launch “the biggest attack since World War II.”
But on Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry flatly denied that it was negotiating with the U.S. or that there were any plans to do so. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei said that Tehran is instead in discussions with Oman to secure a temporary safe route through the Strait of Hormuz.
The previous day, Baghaei said that the proposed route had “no link to the Strait of Hormuz being opened or closed. That is a separate discussion”.
Is there any way out of the impasse? Maybe. The UN has developed a “mechanism” to reopen Hormuz which could resolve many of the intractable issues that both the U.S. and Iran are grappling with.
Talking to me about the details, John Denton, secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), outlined what it entails and how it could work in practice.
“What we’ve strived to do in building this mechanism is to ensure that it will be acceptable and usable by that economic ecosystem [the Strait of Hormuz]. And that requires, obviously, deconfliction of the area, as well as a commitment to the neutral governance of the area,” he said.
You can read my interview with him here, a fascinating insight into just how complicated the war in that region has become.
Melissa Hancock As ever, thanks for reading, and do keep in touch with your thoughts and ideas. See you next week. [email protected]
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