By Quds News Network
Iran has made ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza one of its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil shipping route, a senior Iranian official has said, tying the fate of the strategic waterway directly to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the strait would not be reopened unless the United States changed its conduct and accepted Tehran’s conditions. Among those conditions, he said, Washington must end its wars across the entire region, including in Gaza and Lebanon, release frozen Iranian funds, and meet further demands conveyed through mediators.
Rezaei said the United States is being the source of instability in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman, and said the waterway would remain closed until Washington altered its behavior. He added that any agreement reached between Iran and Oman over passage through the strait would be treated separately from the broader question of its closure.
The inclusion of Gaza in Iran’s demands links the reopening of a waterway through which a large share of the world’s oil and gas passes to the halting of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It signals that Tehran intends to keep the war on Gaza at the center of any regional settlement, using its leverage over global energy routes to press the United States to rein in Israel and end its attacks not only on Gaza but across the region, including in Lebanon.
13 August 2026
Source: countercurrents.org