Iran to Declare New Restricted Zone Beyond Strait of Hormuz

Mohsen Rezaei delivered Iran’s most detailed maritime announcement in weeks on state television Sunday night — a new restricted zone stretching from the US Navy’s own blockade line into the Persian Gulf, a shipping corridor agreement with Oman due for signature within days, and a claimed missile test that, in his telling, sent an American warship fleeing just 48 hours earlier.

The Supreme National Security Council secretary said the new zone would run from where the US naval blockade begins into Gulf waters on the strait’s far side, and that any vessel entering it without coordinating with Tehran would be placed on Iran’s sanctions list — a designation he said would affect the ship’s insurance coverage and future ability to transit the waterway. Separately, he said Iran and Oman have finished agreeing on maps for a new corridor through Hormuz, with entry and exit points that would remain under Iranian management, and that a signing would follow within days.

Rezaei used the same appearance to directly reject Trump’s claims that the strait has been reopened. “Trump’s claim that the Strait of Hormuz is open is a big lie,” he said, insisting Iranian forces maintain complete control and that pre-war daily traffic of over 100 vessels has collapsed to just seven or eight ships carrying essential goods. He said the US is spending heavily to push five or six vessels through the strait despite the restrictions, and claimed those attempting passage near the Omani route, often with navigation systems switched off to evade detection, mostly “receive blows” — though he added Iran has decided against sinking oil tankers specifically, citing environmental concerns rather than any change in overall policy.

The missile claim is the piece of Sunday’s interview that’s hardest to independently verify, and multiple outlets covering the same remarks noted Rezaei gave no specifics on which ship was targeted or where. “For the first time in the history of our conflicts, 48 hours ago we tested a new anti-ship missile against a US warship,” he said, adding “the special missile created a hell for the Americans, and they fled” — a claim consistent with a now-familiar pattern of unverified capability assertions from senior Iranian officials throughout this war, including previous claims about warship counts and war outcomes that have not held up to independent scrutiny.

Rezaei’s own comments contain a tension worth noting directly: he described the strait as “completely closed” and under full Iranian military control, while separately claiming Iran continues selling “one million, one and a half million” barrels of oil daily “as if Iran’s oil production and trade are continuing as usual” — a claim that implies substantial tanker movement is, in fact, occurring, in some tension with the “seven or eight ships” figure offered moments earlier in the same interview.

The diplomatic condition attached to all of this remains unchanged from Iran’s position throughout recent months: Rezaei said the strait stays closed unless Washington takes “practical steps” fulfilling its obligations under the June memorandum of understanding — the same framework that began unraveling within days of signing, with both sides accusing each other of violations, and which Rezaei described Sunday as now being pursued through “diplomacy with guarantees” rather than the direct trust the original deal assumed.

Whether the Iran-Oman corridor agreement actually gets signed on the timeline Rezaei described, and whether the new restricted zone materially changes shipping behavior beyond what the existing standoff has already produced, will likely be visible in transit data within the coming days — a more reliable indicator than any single Iranian official’s characterization of a waterway both Washington and Tehran keep describing in mutually exclusive terms.