Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said the meeting, scheduled for Monday in Salalah, was postponed “in the interests of consensus.” An Iranian Foreign Ministry official separately said the delay came at the request of “some regional countries,” while spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Saudi Arabia had sought the postponement because of developments in Yemen.
No new date has been announced for the meeting.
Baghaei described the planned gathering as an “opportunity” created by Iran and Oman and urged regional states not to let it slip away.
“I don’t think any responsible party would accept that we should lose this opportunity for any reason, whether because of outside interference or because of excuses that really have nothing to do with Iran, and that we should not hold this meeting,” he said Monday.
Several voices in Iran have gone further, explicitly accusing Washington of working to derail the initiative.
Fada-Hossein Maleki, a member of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told Tabnak that the United States had sought from the outset to prevent the Muscat process from taking shape or, if the meeting went ahead, to ensure Washington participated as a third party.
He said an Iran-Oman understanding on Hormuz could represent “another political defeat for the United States” because Washington had sought a role in arrangements concerning the strategic waterway, while Iran and Oman had pursued dialogue over its future management and shipping arrangements independently of Tehran-Washington negotiations.
Ali Gholhaki, an adviser to parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote on X that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates had obstructed the Oman meeting, but said “the main actor behind the cancellation of this meeting is America!”
International affairs analyst Mir-Ghasem Momeni offered a similar interpretation, telling ILNA that the postponement was aimed at increasing pressure on Iran and extracting further concessions.
“This is a scenario designed by the Americans, with Saudi Arabia and other countries carrying it out,” he said.
Saudi concerns offer another explanation
Saudi Arabia’s request came amid mounting tensions over Yemen and attacks on its energy infrastructure, providing a more immediate explanation for Riyadh’s reluctance to proceed with the talks.
The Houthis have stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia amid fighting in Yemen, while attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure have added to concerns over the security of alternative export routes as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted.
Hardline Kayhan newspaper nevertheless alleged that Saudi Arabia had used the recent escalation involving the Houthis and attacks on Saudi infrastructure as a pretext to derail the planned meeting.
The Javan newspaper, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), sought to connect Riyadh’s position more directly to Washington, pointing to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with US Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper on Monday as evidence of what it described as US-Saudi coordination against the talks.
The meeting took place after Oman announced the postponement on Sunday night, however, and there is no public evidence linking Cooper’s visit to the decision to delay the Salalah gathering. Saudi state media said Mohammed bin Salman and Cooper discussed bilateral relations and the latest regional developments.
Limits of regional diplomacy
Some Iranian analysts have interpreted the postponement as evidence of a broader problem with attempts to resolve the Hormuz crisis solely through regional diplomacy.
Momeni argued that Washington retained enough influence over Persian Gulf Arab states to prevent them from reaching an independent arrangement with Tehran.
“The solution to the Strait of Hormuz problem is not an agreement between Iran and the Arab countries, but an agreement between Iran and the United States,” he said.
Political analyst Rahman Ghahramanpour wrote on X that the postponement was a sign of President Donald Trump’s reluctance to revive the Islamabad framework and his preference for designing a new framework that would simultaneously address the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear issue.
International relations professor Mohsen Jalilvand told Fararu that it had been clear from the outset that the meeting either would not take place or would fail to produce a tangible outcome because the principal parties to the conflict, particularly the United States and Israel, were absent from the negotiating table.
Jalilvand said that if the objective was to establish a durable mechanism for managing transit through the Strait of Hormuz, parties with genuine deterrent capabilities and the power to enforce an agreement would have to participate.
“Otherwise, regional treaties alone cannot provide a strong security guarantee for changing the current situation,” he said.
He added that the significance of the Oman meeting lay not simply in whether it was held, but in what its postponement revealed about the limits of regional diplomacy.
Opposition inside Iran
Not all criticism inside Iran has focused on why the meeting was postponed.
Kayhan editor Hossein Shariatmadari, a strong opponent of the understanding with Oman, has argued that the proposed arrangement amounts to giving the United States “a breathing space” and that Iran should not negotiate with other Persian Gulf countries over reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
In a Monday commentary, Shariatmadari sharply criticized the decision to invite other Persian Gulf states to the meeting, accusing them of protecting US and Israeli interests.
“As long as they have not paid the price for supporting the crimes of America and Israel and have not been punished, they should have no role or presence whatsoever in the decision-making of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote.
