In his first public address following his appointment as the new Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei stated that the United States of America must end the war with his country and return Iran’s frozen funds in order to restore shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
According to Iranian media reports, Rezaei stated during a meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Tehran that Iran would not take steps to reopen the vital waterway – which typically accounted for around a fifth of global oil and gas supplies – until the US “change their behaviour and accept Iran’s conditions”.
He cited an end to the war and the return of frozen assets as two such conditions.
Rezaei’s statement on 11 August came a day after US President Donald Trump told journalists that the United States had ‘mined’ the entire Strait of Hormuz and had effectively taken control of it.
Rezaei’s predecessor, Mohammad Bakir Zolkadr, put forward similar conditions last week.
Rezaei also commented on the negotiations between Iran and Oman regarding the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which have been ongoing in recent weeks.
He said that if the two countries reached an agreement on this issue, “that agreement would be a separate matter from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz”.
Iran has severely restricted shipping through the strait since the start of the war with the US and Israel in February, and daily traffic there is now only a fraction of pre-war levels.