The New York Times confirmed on Saturday that Iran and Oman are negotiating a toll system for the Strait of Hormuz even as the United States has warned against it, the second Western outlet this week to put a document inside the talks the paper has been carrying since the Iranian ambassador to France first paraphrased them in Paris. [1] Bloomberg reported the Iranian ambassador's account Friday; the New York Times account is the Saturday confirmation. Two wires now describe the same talks. The Sultanate of Oman, in whose capital the document is reportedly being drafted, has not commented. The Omani mission to the United Nations declined to elaborate on the negotiations. Efforts to reach Omani officials for comment were unsuccessful. [2]

The paper's Friday account of the Iran-Oman bilateral track still having no Muscat document framed the absence as the structural watch item. That frame is now superseded. The document exists in two MSM outlets. The frame needs the correction the Saturday print supplies: the paper said yesterday there was still no Muscat document, and there now is one in Bloomberg and one in the New York Times, both attributed to people familiar with the matter. What remains absent is the Omani side of the document — the Sultanate's confirmation, denial, or characterization of what is being negotiated in its name.

The structural geometry of the Saturday print is worth naming. The Iranian foreign minister has confirmed the toll-negotiation framing to multiple Persian-language wires and to the Press TV reading of the Bloomberg interview. [3] Iran has unilaterally created the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, a new regulatory body that posted a map of the management-supervision area on X earlier in the week. The Iranian framing has a regulator, a map, a published rate of roughly $1 per barrel of oil cargo, and a published payment mechanism in yuan or cryptocurrency. The Omani framing has none of these. The Omani framing is silence.

The U.S. position is firm and named at the highest level. President Trump, in remarks Thursday, said, "We don't want tolls. It's international. It's an international waterway." [1] Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in remarks reported by the Jerusalem Post account, said, "It can't happen. It would be unacceptable. It would make a diplomatic deal unfeasible if they were to continue to pursue that." [1] The position has not produced a written counter-document from any GCC state. France's UN Security Council draft, which would reopen the Strait under multinational auspices, was circulated Friday and remains without a co-sponsor on Day 2. The American counter to the Iranian toll regime, in other words, is a Rubio quote and a French draft. Neither has produced enforcement mechanism or Gulf-state signatory.

Oman's silence is the second receipt. The Sultanate has historically positioned itself as the back-channel-of-record between Tehran and Washington. The Pakistan-brokered ceasefire on April 8 left Oman holding a mediating role that was confirmed by no fewer than four senior Iranian and U.S. officials in the week that followed. The toll negotiation, if it is happening in Muscat, is happening in the city where the ceasefire is supposed to be administered. The Omani foreign ministry has not, as of Saturday morning, issued any public statement about either the toll talks or the broader Hormuz governance question. The silence is operational. It preserves Muscat's option to mediate either way.

The roic.ai account, which framed the talks in the most analytically structured way of the wires this week, noted that "Muscat has so far resisted endorsing tolls, according to officials briefed on the discussions." [2] If true, the Omani position privately resists a regime its public silence does nothing to refute. The mediator's posture is the most consequential variable in the next ten days. If Muscat issues a public denial, the Iranian framing loses its second-party. If it issues a public confirmation, the French UN draft acquires its veto target. If it stays silent, the Iranian framing wins the procedural ground in the Western wires.

The paper's structural reading is that the toll regime is being built in the absence of Omani objection. Whether that absence is consent, deferral, or strategy is the open question. The Saturday correction the paper makes is on the document's existence: it is now in two MSM outlets. The open question the paper carries forward is the Omani side. If the Sultanate has not commented by Tuesday after the holiday weekend, the silence becomes evidence. If it comments before Tuesday, the silence ends and the structural geometry of the Hormuz arrangement acquires its third corner.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem