Last Friday, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi announced, “The passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire.”

Within hours of that announcement from Iran’s foreign ministry, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological militant arm of the regime operating alongside but separate from Iran’s conventional military and designated by the United States as a terrorist organisation, issued a different directive. IRGC-aligned statements said, “The situation in the Strait of Hormuz will remain strictly controlled and unchanged” and that control had “returned to its previous state … under strict management and control of the armed forces”.

After the foreign ministry’s assurance, tanker traffic began moving through the strait.

However, following the IRGC’s directive, Iranian gunboats intercepted merchant vessels northeast of Oman attempting to traverse the strait. A tanker attempting to transit the waterway was fired upon by two IRGC gunboats, with no prior radio warning issued, forcing the vessel to halt and withdraw. Indian authorities later confirmed that two Indian-flagged ships had come under attack while attempting to cross the strait. Other commercial vessels in the area altered course or turned back following the incidents.

Shipping traffic rapidly stalled as operators sought clarity on which Iranian authority was issuing binding instructions. Despite the foreign ministry’s assurance that the route was open, vessels required coordination with Iranian military channels to pass, reinforcing the reality of competing chains of command.

In response, the US has seized an Iranian-flagged tanker in the Gulf of Oman that was attempting to bypass a US-led naval blockade of Iranian shipping. According to the US, the ship in question had previously been sanctioned and was carrying “illicit cargo”.

Attention has now shifted to planned negotiations in Islamabad, which are scheduled to take place this week as part of efforts to stabilise the ceasefire. The talks, should they go ahead, are expected to bring together US and Iranian representatives through Pakistani mediation, following earlier attempts to establish a framework for de-escalation.

However, the events of the past 48 hours have complicated those talks. The firing on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the conflicting directives issued by Iran’s foreign ministry and the IRGC have raised immediate questions over who is in command of that country. Diplomats may arrive in Islamabad with a mandate to negotiate, but the sequence of events suggests that assurances given through formal diplomatic channels are not necessarily binding on forces controlling events on the ground and at sea, pointing to a possible fracturing within the regime’s elite between its diplomatic leadership and hardline IRGC commanders.

Even so, the fact that talks in Islamabad may proceed points to a nearer-term exit from the conflict rather than a prolonged escalation. Despite the events of the past few days, the continued engagement between the parties aligns more closely with earlier scenarios that envisaged a negotiated or managed de-escalation rather than the more extreme outcome of a drawn-out war involving large-scale ground deployments.