Why Tokyo Should Watch Iran-Oman Talks More Closely Than Washington

The call neither Washington nor Tel Aviv is leading

Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi and Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held a phone conversation on August 21, according to Oman’s Foreign Ministry. The subject: reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blockaded since the US-Israeli strikes on Tehran began on February 28, 2026. The two sides confirmed they will keep talking. That sentence — deceptively plain — carries more weight for Tokyo than for anyone else in the room.

Iran is not making things easy. It is raising its conditions. Compensation for damage inflicted during the war. Sanctions relief. Both are nonstarters for the Trump administration, which President Donald Trump dismissed on August 21 by saying Iran simply is not ready for a deal. Before that, on August 17, Trump told Fox News that Oman would face total bombing if it struck a deal with Iran without US approval. The message was unambiguous: Washington reserves the right to veto any arrangement that serves Tehran’s interests more than America’s.

So who is this call actually about? Not Washington. It is about the countries that still need the strait to flow.

Japan imports more LNG through Hormuz than any nation on earth

This is the part English-language coverage rarely makes explicit. Japan is the world’s largest liquefied natural gas importer. Roughly 85 percent of Japan’s crude oil imports transit the Strait of Hormuz. A significant share of its LNG cargoes — from Qatar, the world’s largest exporter — make the same chokepoint. When Hormuz goes quiet, Tokyo does not have a nearby pipeline to reroute. There is no alternative route with capacity anywhere near what the strait moves daily: approximately 20 percent of global oil trade and 25 percent of globally traded LNG.

The February 2026 attacks on Iran changed the calculus overnight. Tehran responded by tightening control over the strait, and the world watched spot LNG prices spike. Japan felt it first and hardest. Every day the strait remains contested, Japanese importers pay a risk premium that flows directly into electricity bills, industrial costs, and ultimately consumer prices across the archipelago.

China and South Korea also depend heavily on Hormuz. But Japan’s dependence is structurally deeper because its LNG contracts are predominantly spot-linked and its refinery fleet is concentrated along the Persian Gulf shipping lanes. A prolonged disruption does not merely raise prices — it threatens rationing.

The fracture inside Iran is real, and it matters

The conversation between Badr and Amir-Abdollahian took place against a backdrop of visible strain inside the Iranian leadership. President Masoud Pezeshkian told a meeting in Tehran on August 21 that Iran would not yield to bullying, and added — notably — that today is the time to end the war, that the world recognizes Iran’s victory over the United States. The Financial Times reported that this statement reflected an internal debate: the Revolutionary Guard advocates continued resistance, while Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf worry that the people’s suffering is becoming unsustainable.

That divergence is the hinge. If Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf are signaling willingness to negotiate, it is not humanitarian concern alone. It is the economic gravity of a blockade that is strangling their own population. Iran’s oil exports have been disrupted. Sanctions bite harder when you cannot sell what you produce. The longer Hormuz stays constrained, the more Iran hurts itself.

But the Revolutionary Guard controls the narrative on security. Any deal that looks like surrender will face fierce opposition from the IRGC, which has the组织能力 to make or break a diplomatic opening from within. This is why Oman is the mediator of choice — it has maintained channels with Tehran that Washington and Israel do not, and it has survived being threatened with bombing by the very ally whose deal it is trying to facilitate.

Oman is the only player left standing in the middle

Trump’s threat to bomb Oman if it strikes a deal without US approval was not idle rhetoric aimed solely at Tehran. It was a warning to every neutral state that might try to broker an agreement independent of Washington. Oman occupies a geography and a history that make it uniquely positioned to talk to both sides — it shares a border with Iran, it is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and it has never been a belligerent in the region’s conflicts. That neutrality is its leverage. But it is also its liability.

If Oman pushes too hard for Hormuz’s reopening, Washington blames it. If it hesitates, Tehran closes the strait further and the regional economy collapses. The fact that Oman chose to proceed with the phone call anyway — despite the bombing threat — suggests it has calculated that the cost of doing nothing now exceeds the risk of American anger.

That calculation is exactly why Tokyo should be paying attention. Oman’s diplomacy is the only channel currently open that could actually deliver a resolution. Washington is committed to a maximum-pressure stance. Tehran is committed to extracting concessions before it concedes. Only Muscat sits between the two with enough trust on both sides to translate talk into a deal.

What Hormuz reopening would do to energy markets

Let us be concrete. A return to free navigation through the strait would send a sharp downward correction through global oil and LNG prices. Brent crude, which has been trading at elevated levels since the February strikes, would likely fall — the speed and magnitude depending on whether the reopening is full or partial. A partial reopening, with continued insurance and navigation warnings, would still ease supply anxiety enough to reduce risk premiums.

For Japan, the impact is immediate. Spot LNG prices in Asia (JKM) would drop. Long-term contract holders with floating tariff clauses would see relief. Industrial consumers — cement, steel, chemicals — would feel it within months. Household electricity costs, already a political flashpoint in Japan, would come under less pressure.

But reopening does not mean stability. Iran’s conditions — compensation and sanctions relief — remain unresolved. If the deal is fragile, a single incident could close the strait again. That is the risk Japan faces: not a permanent closure, but a reopen-close-reopen cycle that keeps energy prices volatile and makes long-term planning impossible.

Who wins, who loses, and what comes next

If the Oman-mediated talks produce even a tentative agreement, Pezeshkian gains politically — he can point to diplomacy that eased pressure on Iranian civilians without appearing to capitulate to Washington. Ghalibaf’s parliamentary faction wins access to potential sanctions relief. The IRGC claims it forced Iran’s hand by demonstrating the power of the blockade. Oman wins relevance. Tokyo wins lower energy costs. Beijing and Seoul win supply security for their refineries.

If the talks fail — and the conditions Iran is listing suggest failure is more likely than success — Hormuz stays contested, energy prices stay elevated, and Japan faces another winter of inflationary pressure on heating and electricity. Trump gets to claim he held the line. Iran gets to claim it survived. Nobody gets a deal.

The phone call on August 21 was small. But in a crisis where the alternative to diplomacy is an unchecked blockade over the world’s most important energy chokepoint, small calls are all that stand between market stability and something far worse.

Tokyo should be listening closely.