TEHRAN -- A regional meeting bringing together Iran, Iraq and several Persian Gulf coastal states in Salalah on Monday could mark the first step toward a regional framework for dialogue and cooperation on security in the Persian Gulf, strengthening the role of regional states in securing their own region and reducing dependence on extra-regional security arrangements.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed the meeting on Friday, saying regional issues as well as the results of negotiations between Iran and Oman on establishing safe shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz would be discussed.
The most important item on the agenda is expected to be the unveiling of an Iran-Oman mechanism for managing navigation through the strait. 
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said the two countries’ agreement on establishing a joint route through Hormuz would be signed Monday in the presence of foreign ministers from Arab Persian Gulf states and
 subsequently submitted to the International Maritime Organization.
However, an informed source close to the negotiating team stressed that the understanding does not mean the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened.
According to the source, Iran and Oman reached a final understanding in early September after intensive technical and diplomatic talks. The arrangement concerns new entry and exit routes through the strait. 
The entrance route into the Persian Gulf will lie entirely within Iranian territorial waters, while part of the exit route will also pass through Iranian territorial waters. Navigation along these routes will operate under Iranian arrangements.
Once implemented, the southern route, whose reopening the United States had insisted upon and which became a major source of renewed tension, will be closed.
The source said other participating countries are being briefed on the outcome of the Iran-Oman negotiations and the navigation arrangements, while the technical details were settled in bilateral talks between Tehran and Muscat.
The source also emphasized that Iran has conveyed seven conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz to the United States through intermediaries. Until those conditions, approved by the highest authorities of the Islamic Republic, are implemented, the strait will remain closed.
Thus, the Iran-Oman understanding establishes the framework under which the strait could be reopened if Iran decides to do so. Its implementation would also represent a step toward exercising Iranian sovereignty over the waterway. Any reopening, the source said, depends entirely on Washington’s conduct and fulfillment of Iran’s conditions.
The understanding follows the Aug. 25 Iran-Oman statement on a temporary joint maritime corridor through Hormuz, cooperation on mine clearance, and continued technical negotiations toward a permanent corridor and arrangements for information exchange, traffic management, navigation and security services.
For Tehran, the significance of Salalah extends beyond shipping. Iran has consistently stated that lasting security in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz can only be achieved by respecting the rights and interests of the coastal states themselves. 
As Baghaei has repeatedly stressed, security must be ensured for all regional countries or for none.
The war and the sharp decline in shipping carrying energy, food and other essential goods have also transformed the crisis in Hormuz from a dispute involving Iran and the United States into a common concern for the countries of the Persian Gulf.
Against this backdrop, Salalah could become the beginning of a broader process of endogenous regional security — one in which the security of the Persian Gulf is shaped from within the region, by its coastal states and neighbors, rather than designed and managed by extra-regional powers.
Iran’s participation reflects an approach in which regional diplomacy proceeds alongside deterrence, while Tehran maintains its rights and interests in the Strait of Hormuz and does not forget the events and confrontations of the past months.