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Iran presses countries to refuse U.S. sanctions

August 29, 2026

Iran's Foreign Ministry calls on all countries to refuse new U.S. sanctions as the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz reaches its six-month mark.

CBS News reports that the U.S. Treasury Department is cutting a major Egyptian bank's operations in the United Arab Emirates off from the U.S. financial system, and carries the American claim that Iran has exported zero barrels of oil from its shores since the naval blockade resumed in mid-July, against 750 million barrels of crude the U.S. says it allowed out of the Persian Gulf. CNBC reports that Iran's Foreign Ministry has called on all countries to refuse the sanctions and warned that compliance would amount to complicity in imposing an illegal will; NBC News carries the same appeal in its own words, so the two agree. Fox News reports that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told state media exports have fallen nearly 35% under the sanctions and the blockade, and that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has told officials to address inflation, unemployment and prices. Al Jazeera's own title states that Tehran is pledging to stand firm against sanctions it calls unjust.

On the waterway itself the accounts line up. NBC News quotes Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, saying in a video message that “Bottom line: today, international shipping lanes are open and momentum is building,” and CNBC carries the same message. CBS News sets that against the traffic, counting about two dozen ships against the roughly 120 that would transit daily before the war, with shippers wary of Iran's standing threat to vessels that pass without coordinating with Tehran. CBS News and NBC News both report Cooper's acknowledgment that U.S. forces have assisted nearly 1,500 commercial vessels through the strait. NBC News and CNBC both report Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, telling Al Manar TV that Iran is drawing up conditions for reopening the strait and has agreed with Oman on a corridor running partly through Omani and partly through Iranian waters; CNBC adds Rezaei's linkage of any Hormuz understanding to an end to military operations in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria. CBS News and NBC News report Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani pressing senior Iranian officials in Tehran on freedom of navigation under international law.

One point is in dispute. A statement quoted in the coverage sets out what the U.S. president promised at the war's outset, including destroying Iran's nuclear program and toppling the government within weeks; one account carries that characterization as issued, and a competing account contests it. Everything else here is corroborated across the outlets: the Treasury action, Tehran's refusal to comply, the near-total halt to shipping, the Qatari and Omani mediation, the partial return of American diplomats' families to embassies in Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, and the Iran and Russia talks on an overland gas pipeline through Azerbaijan at an initial 150 million cubic meters per day. What the sanctions do to Iran's economy beyond the export figure Tehran itself gives, and what conditions Iran will set for the strait, are not resolved in the record.

Still developing

The conditions Iran is preparing for reopening the Strait of Hormuz are not yet public, and the Oman corridor Rezaei describes has no confirmed opening date across the accounts. The evacuation of mariners still in the Gulf also sits unfinished, with 136 vessels and about 2,900 seafarers evacuated and no movement since the effort paused at the end of June.

How settled the reporting is

Reported 96% · Contested 1% · Developing 3%

Sources