On the night of 7-8 April, the U.S. and Iran announced a Pakistani-brokered ceasefire after nearly six weeks of war. Their statements sparked hopes worldwide: not only could the two-week truce be the first step toward ending the conflict initiated by the U.S. and Israel on 28 February, but it might also lead Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz – the narrow passage connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the rest of the world – which it began blocking soon thereafter. 

Hostilities did not pause right away, and the deal remains fragile. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran and Iran’s strikes on Gulf Arab states continued in the 48 hours after the ceasefire began, with chances of the truce falling apart seeming to increase by the hour. There was especially acute confusion over Lebanon. In the first 24 hours after President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire – which Tehran confirmed shortly thereafter – Israel ratcheted up its campaign against Iran’s Hizbollah ally there, scaling back its bombardment somewhat subsequently. While Israel and the U.S. claimed that the deal did not include Lebanon, Iran and Pakistan asserted that it did. Tehran responded to Israel’s strikes by cancelling previously approved oil tanker transits through the Strait of Hormuz, risking a renewal of full-scale fighting. On 8 April, ship traffic remained down more than 90 per cent amid the continued uncertainty. Late on 9 April, following criticism from European capitals and a request from Trump to “low-key it”, Israel said it would enter talks with the Lebanese government about disarming Hizbollah, its declared war aim in Lebanon. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli military would keep going after Hizbollah in the interim, sowing fresh doubt about whether the ceasefire will hold. 

With U.S. and Iranian negotiators scheduled to meet in Pakistan on 10 April, the two sides have laid out sharply contrasting views of what a longer-term settlement would look like. Both Washington and Tehran are publicly sticking to maximalist agendas they know to be unacceptable to the other side. The White House insists that Tehran forgo any further enrichment of uranium, hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to the U.S., end its support for non-state armed actors in the Middle East and curb its ballistic missile program. Iran, meanwhile, demands a comprehensive end to the Middle East conflict, including in Lebanon, reparations for the damage it has suffered during the war, guarantees that the U.S. and Israel will not attack it again, recognition of its right to enrichment and continued control of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The Israeli leadership, for its part, remains sceptical of any deal that will leave the Iranian regime intact. The regime’s collapse now appears improbable, but Israel wants to keep striking Iran to weaken its military capabilities and hold on power. 

Whether negotiations gain traction or not, the status of the Strait of Hormuz will be at the centre of the belligerents’ military and diplomatic strategies. Tehran has spent decades preparing for the possibility of conflict with the U.S., an adversary it cannot defeat on the battlefield. Its greatest – though until this war untested – leverage has been to threaten commercial shipping with attack by missiles, mines, drones and small boats, thus blocking the strait and inflicting economic pain on its foes and everyone else. It put those plans into action soon after the first U.S.-Israeli bombardment on 28 February. Iran fired upon at least 23 ships in or near the strait, and it may have also emplaced its first sea mines with economic and humanitarian consequences deepening fast around the world.

If prolonged, the near-complete obstruction of the strait could be the global economic equivalent of an aortic dissection. Roughly one quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes through the strait each year, along with one fifth of the natural gas, one third of the fertiliser and about half the sulfur needed to make additional phosphate fertiliser and refine metals like copper and nickel. So, too, does one third of the helium used for things like microchip production. In a typical year, close to 40,000 cargo ships lumber through the strait bearing these and other commodities to market. That traffic is down to a trickle, with over 2,000 vessels carrying some 20,000 mariners stranded in the Gulf. No route to the ocean for this seaborne trade exists other than the Strait of Hormuz. 

Unless the strait is durably reopened, economic crises will multiply in countries near and far. Gulf Arab states and Iran rely on exports for much of their revenue and typically depend on seaborne food imports to feed their people. Throughout the rest of the world, transport is rapidly getting more expensive as jet and ship fuel supplies dwindle, while food prices may spike if fertiliser runs out and crop yields fall. Manufacturing of all kinds could also soon suffer from a scarcity of raw materials.

A number of actors have tabled proposals for reopening the strait to regular traffic, ranging from launching an international flotilla to protect civilian vessels to a diplomatic bargain allowing some goods – such as fertiliser – through. None has yet gone anywhere.

Meanwhile, over the course of nearly six weeks of war, the Trump administration has oscillated wildly in its attitude to the strait. At times, Washington has indicated that the strait’s closure is largely a problem for other countries to deal with – as the U.S. does not rely heavily on energy or fertiliser exports from the Gulf – while at other times, it has threatened to escalate hostilities unless Iran allowed free passage. In the morning of 7 April, some eleven hours before his ceasefire announcement, President Trump said “a whole civilisation will die tonight” if Tehran did not relent. In the first few hours after the ceasefire, a few ships went through the strait, but immense uncertainty remained, including with regard to exactly how many vessels Iran would allow to pass under the truce’s terms. But then, with news of Israeli bombing in Lebanon, Iran said the waterway was blocked again.

In reality, Iran has never fully closed the strait. It kept the passage partially open even before the ceasefire, as it continued to export its own oil – earning perhaps $25 million more per day than it had before the war. It has also permitted, after negotiations, ships it deemed neutral to transit Iranian territorial waters (and, briefly, another route through Omani waters in the strait in apparent consultation with Muscat) rather than the international transit lanes. In at least some, if not many, cases, it has allowed ships through in exchange for a transit fee in the low millions of dollars, though paid in yuan or cryptocurrency. This “Tehran toll booth” demonstrates how tight Iran’s grip has become – and how much tighter it could be. On 9 April, Iran published a map indicating that the corridor through its own waters remains safe, but that it has laid mines in both the international and Omani lanes. There is some dispute about the extent of the mining, but the threat to shipping is substantial. Many assumed that mining the strait would threaten Iran’s own vital commerce, but at least since the last week of March Iran has been using its own corridor for bulk imports like food.

It is unclear what the U.S. and Israel could do militarily to loosen Iran’s chokehold. Before the ceasefire, air and naval attacks failed to push Iran to reopen Hormuz, as all sides sought to force concessions through economic coercion. Israel struck oil storage facilities in Tehran and the Iranian side of the world’s largest gas field. Iran responded in kind, striking Qatar’s side of the field and knocking out a reported 17 per cent of its natural gas production capacity for up to five years, on top of the damage it did in previous fire upon Gulf Arab hydrocarbon facilities and other infrastructure. The U.S. has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iranian power plants and other critical facilities and to take Kharg island, where most of Tehran’s oil exports are loaded onto tankers. 

The longer the strait remains mostly closed, especially if these tit-for-tat attacks resume, the more the costs compound for the rest of the world (except for a handful of companies, such as in the U.S. oil sector, and countries like Russia, which has benefited from rising energy costs and the relaxation of sanctions on its exports). Workarounds like pipelines across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq relieve the pressure on oil exports, but are insufficient, as they remain within the reach of Iranian projectiles and leave other vital commodities like liquefied natural gas and fertiliser stuck. Parts of Asia, where most oil from the Gulf usually goes, have so far paid the biggest price. Countries like Japan are scrambling to find alternative supplies as prices spike. The Philippines was the first country to declare a national emergency linked to the fuel crisis, while others in Asia have adopted measures to protect their limited stores. The downstream impact is heading west quickly. The U.S. has allowed Iran’s oil exports to continue for fear of further price hikes, even granting waivers for sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil already on ships as of cutoff dates. 

Even if the ceasefire deal brings about the war’s end, the conflict’s effects will linger. Restarting the specialised oil and gas production and processing facilities in the Gulf will take weeks to months, and the return of ships to pick up those exports longer still. Repairs to some of the sites that have been hit will take years. If the war does restart – even if at a smaller scale but with Hormuz still closed – these timelines will lengthen, and the global economic pinch will get more painful still. 

Additionally, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, members of Iran’s “axis of resistance” who stayed out of the war for weeks until launching a missile at Israel on 28 March, could begin striking shipping in the Red Sea, thus opening a two-strait war. This prospect comes at a time when up to 11 per cent of global seaborne crude oil is passing through Saudi Arabia’s port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. In the 1980s, with the Iran-Iraq war imperilling traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, Riyadh built a pipeline to carry crude from its oil-rich east to Yanbu. The pipeline is long since up and running, but unlike in the 1980s, when Riyadh first wished to bypass Hormuz, its main oil customers are in East Asia rather than Europe or the Americas. Asia-bound exports go south through the Red Sea by the coast of Yemen. 

Should the Houthis open the Red Sea front, they could curtail or end these exports with a single, successful attack on a commercial ship – even one without links to Saudi Arabia – and drive up global energy and shipping costs even further. Nor would the Houthis necessarily need advanced missiles to pull off such a feat: some of their most effective attacks during the Gaza war in 2023-2025, when they harried Red Sea shipping in stated solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinians, used boarding parties borne on small boats or helicopters. Should Saudi Arabia re-route oil tankers north through the Suez Canal, the Houthis or Iran could threaten those ships as well, and on 8 April Iran struck a pumping station on the east-west pipeline, reducing the flow of oil through it.

The U.S. has weighed various options, and moved personnel in place to act on them, with two small groups of U.S. marines with amphibious assault assets and other elite troops in or en route to the region. There is talk in the Pentagon of another 10,000 U.S. troops being deployed. The forces already on their way to the Gulf will arrive within the two-week ceasefire period and be ready for any escalation. If they attack, they could limit themselves to raids aimed at knocking out more Iranian capabilities. They could also mount invasions of parts of the Iranian mainland or one or more Iran-held islands in attempts to eliminate threats to shipping, like hidden attack craft, spread U.S. air defences further and give Washington something concrete it can use in bartering with Tehran. In size and composition, the new forces are probably best suited for raiding or taking islands, reportedly with the UAE‘s support or participation.

If U.S. forces occupied an island in or near the strait like Larak, they would be able to threaten Iran’s alternative corridor, and if they took Kharg, they could grab control of the facilities used to load most of Iran’s oil exports (though not the oil itself, as Iran could switch off the flow to the terminals). The idea would reportedly be to hold Kharg “hostage”, in the hope that Iran would then ease its stranglehold on the strait. Still, Iran has smaller alternative routes for oil export and, in any case, the U.S. has shown no interest up to now in stopping Iranian oil from reaching global markets, which would further drive up oil prices. Other options for ending those exports include blockading or destroying Iran’s ports or interdicting Iran-laden or -bound tankers at sea.

These options appear unlikely to free up the strait. If its coastal defences fall, Iran might lose much of its feared minelaying and seaborne attack capacity, but it could keep menacing the Strait of Hormuz with missiles and attack drones fired from thousands of kilometres away. In so doing, Iran would be emulating its Houthi allies. During the Gaza war, the Houthis rarely made use of the Yemeni coast or the ports they controlled for their attacks on Red Sea shipping, launching projectiles instead from inland strongholds. Moreover, even one high-casualty Iranian strike on occupying U.S. forces could create major political costs for the Trump administration, though it is anyone’s guess whether these would lead it to pull back or to escalate further.

Still another possibility is using the U.S. navy to accompany cargo vessels through the strait. Discussions of this option foundered, however, as the U.S. naval command wants to have greater confidence that threats to U.S. warships are sufficiently reduced before parading them off the Iranian coast. The escorts may yet come after more bombing and the capture of one or more islands, but it is hard to imagine a scenario in which the convoys would sail absent the risk of attack. In any case, the U.S. would be making an enormous commitment of ships and aircraft to usher only a small portion of pre-war traffic to the Arabian Sea – and with no timeline for ending this arrangement. 

The present escort debate invites comparison to what the U.S. did during the “tanker war” of the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq, in a bloody stalemate on the battlefield, targeted each other’s oil exports. That effort, which entailed U.S. naval escorts of mostly U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti ships for protection from Iranian attack, was strategically inconsequential, despite its tactical success. The number of escorted ships was low, while the convoys made tempting targets for Iran, with one U.S. escort ship incapacitated. The U.S. had to repeatedly engage Iranian forces in battle to secure its convoys. The geography of the problem has not changed, though U.S. and Iranian arsenals have – the U.S. navy is now much smaller and the demand for escorts much higher, while Iran has new weapons like its Shahed attack drone, which is capable of striking from far away. Escorts could thus end up being a very small and expensive band-aid on a very large wound.

The U.S. has made a range of often contradictory proposals about the strait since Iran took steps to close it. Through intermediaries, it sent Tehran a fifteen-point wish list on 23 March that includes resumption of normal transit through Hormuz, which an Iranian spokesperson said amounted to the U.S. “negotiating with itself”. On 7 April, Iran issued a ten-point proposal that the U.S. appeared to accept as the basis for negotiations, but the declared goals of the version released publicly, such as “sovereignty” over the strait, a continued nuclear program and U.S. military withdrawal from the Middle East, remain non-starters for Washington. Complicating matters further, before the ceasefire Gulf Arab states like Bahrain and the UAE were increasingly emphasising the global impact of the throttled strait to garner support for a “conclusive outcome” to the war that leaves the waterway fully open to navigation. Following the ceasefire, five of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (with the notable exception of Oman) issued statements underlining that the complete and safe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, in accordance with international law, should be the centrepiece of a permanent settlement.  

Several states have offered their services as neutral mediators to pause or end the war and reopen the strait. Oman, which played the mediator’s role most often in the past, has had a lesser role in the current diplomacy. Pakistan, Egypt and Türkiye are now acting as intermediaries between Washington and Tehran, with Islamabad doing much to broker the 7 April ceasefire and offering to host U.S. and Iranian delegations on 10 April. Qatar was also reportedly involved in the ceasefire process. Saudi Arabia is engaged with this group and maintains a diplomatic channel with Iran. China joined with Pakistan in offering a framework for a ceasefire and negotiations, calling for respect for international law, sovereignty and freedom of navigation. China also reportedly leaned on Tehran to accept the 7 April truce. 

The latest diplomacy comes after the U.S. has tried other gambits to get ships moving. Early on, President Trump implored shipowners and mariners to “show some guts” and simply brave the danger of Iranian attack by heading for the Gulf’s exit without Iranian approval. Few ships dared take that approach. Washington has since oscillated between asking allies and rivals alike to send their navies to help reopen the strait – a request all have flatly rejected – and declaring that no help is needed. A month into the war, Trump suggested that countries seeking oil from the Gulf should go and take it for themselves without U.S. involvement.

Separately, numerous U.S. treaty allies and other states released a joint statement (others signed on afterward) expressing readiness to contribute to undefined “appropriate measures” to reopen the strait. The UK hosted talks at the beginning of April with dozens of countries focused on the practicalities. This initiative came at least in part as a response to Washington’s threats to cut arms flows to Ukraine via NATO, and possibly withdraw from NATO entirely, if European and other partners did not ride to the rescue in the Gulf. But diplomats understand it to refer to a post-conflict mission, not participation in the U.S.-Israeli war. If it comes together, it may follow or build on the monitoring framework of the European-led Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz begun in 2020 or the defensively mandated naval coalition model of Combined Task Force Sentinel initiated a year earlier.

For its part, Tehran claimed that the strait is not closed and informed the International Maritime Organisation on 24 March that “non-hostile” ships lacking affiliation with the U.S., Israel or its other foes could transit in coordination with Iran. As noted, a small number of vessels subsequently passed through the strait untouched – though often for a fee – following talks with Iran. At first, this arrangement worked on a ship-by-ship basis. It developed to encompass a steadily growing list of states Tehran deems neutral in the conflict, including India and Pakistan, which have negotiated passage for multiple vessels at once. Pakistan previously received approval for twenty ships, which included vessels reflagging to Pakistan’s registry for the trip, and reportedly solicited some of the world’s biggest commodities traders to take up the offer. Even a French-owned vessel has used the Iranian alternative route, though it is too early to tell if its passage will open the door for European shipping broadly or will be a one-time deal.

Countries that depend on oil and other commodities from the Gulf may accept the “Tehran toll booth” for now to ensure that their economies do not stall for want of fuel, fertiliser and raw materials. Though the vast majority of states are wary of permanently adding to commodity costs and setting a dangerous maritime precedent with the tolling arrangement, most neutral states have not publicly opposed the mechanism. Some have, however, like Singapore – itself a steward of another of the world’s most important straits – publicly rejected these bilateral arrangements, on the basis that any such toll runs counter to freedom of navigation principles enshrined in international law. 

Iran has also sought to make arrangements with some of its neighbours. Tehran gave Iraq permission to export oil through the strait, though this gesture may be more political than anything else, given the political and logistical challenges to reliably upscaling production and shipping. Iran and Oman also continue to engage on the Strait of Hormuz, as is evident in the apparent coordination of small convoys through the Omani coastal route before the ceasefire. As noted, Oman’s statement welcoming the ceasefire was the only one from a GCC state not to explicitly stress that freedom of navigation in the strait must resume. But the Omani transport minister told parliament that Muscat intends to honour its international obligations preventing it from levying a fee on passage through the strait. Muscat’s engagement with Tehran does not mean acquiescence in Iran’s agenda; rather, it is consistent with Oman’s position as a mediator during the present war and previously. 

Some states have tried to resist Iran’s tactics multilaterally, but thus far to little avail. Bahrain sought the UN Security Council’s blessing for a strong military and diplomatic riposte to Iran’s blockage of the strait. It proposed a resolution that would have provided states with a Chapter VII mandate to use “all necessary means” to forcibly reopen the waterway – essentially the U.S. request but with a Council mandate. Russia and China vetoed a watered-down resolution on 7 April, then tabling their own draft resolution calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities, negotiations for a comprehensive peace deal and freedom of navigation in the strait.

Independent of developments in the Security Council, Secretary-General António Guterres has mobilised a two-part response to the crisis. He appointed Jean Arnault as his personal envoy to lead UN efforts on the conflict and its consequences; shortly after the failed Council vote on the Bahrain text, the Iranian ambassador to the UN announced that Arnault was expected in Tehran for consultations with Iranian officials. Separately, Guterres stood up a new coordination mechanism for the strait, modelled on similar UN efforts in Gaza, Yemen and the Black Sea. The Hormuz Task Force, working in coordination with Arnault, would oversee the safe transit of ships carrying fertiliser, fertiliser inputs and humanitarian assistance out of the Gulf and essential imports like food into it through a deconfliction and coordination system based in Salalah, Oman. This effort would not cover energy exports, and it takes no explicit position on Iran’s alternative corridor through its own waters – something Gulf Arab states may be unable to accept. 

Perhaps counterintuitively, such efforts have gone badly for big navies and comparatively well for those without them. As Iran’s success in the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates, a state located next to a maritime chokepoint can deny its rivals use of the waterway, simply by relying on its geographic advantage and a low-tech arsenal. A navy is not required, let alone the high-end blue-water fleet that only a handful of states can sustain. 

In response to the Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping, the European Union launched the defensively mandated Operation Aspides in early 2024. Deploying only a few ships at a time, Aspides managed to escort a few hundred ships through the sea in the remainder of that year, compared to the typical annual traffic of over 22,000 ships. Some German naval vessels even had to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope themselves as they could not find sufficient escort and lacked the defences to feel safe steaming through the Red Sea. The operation highlighted a lack of European naval power more than it secured the Red Sea, where traffic remained mostly suppressed. Reflecting on discussions of a similar mission in the Strait of Hormuz, the German foreign minister concluded that “Aspides is not effective”. 

Two U.S. campaigns alongside allies like the UK and Israel – the fifteen-month Operation Prosperity Guardian under President Joe Biden and the more aggressive, 52-day Operation Rough Rider under President Trump – damaged the Houthis but failed to achieve strategic goals. So, too, did episodic strikes by Israel from mid-2024 through late 2025. These efforts came at great expense and threatened enormous harm to civilians living under Houthi rule when the U.S. and Israel bombed essential infrastructure like power plants and ports handling food and fuel. As of early 2026, freedom of navigation had still not been restored to the Red Sea, with maritime traffic down about 60 per cent compared to the period before October 2023. The U.S. moved on after securing a narrow ceasefire with the Houthis for its own vessels, while the Houthis broadened their targeting criteria for commercial shipping. 

This failure looms larger as the risk of a two-strait war persists. Reducing, stopping or interdicting shipping in a corridor often proves easier than getting commercial ships to continue or resume using one. Markets for shipping, the goods carried by cargo vessels and the insurance that undergirds the whole endeavour often determine the strategic impact of battles over major sea lanes as much as the shooting itself. If the corridor remains a risky bet, then traffic may not return even if military metrics appear positive (and, on its own, data like the number of drone launches is often a poor indicator of a remaining threat). On 6 April, President Trump appeared to acknowledge this reality in referring to the “psychology” of laying even a small number of mines.

The private sector, and especially insurance, seeks legible risk that can be priced and mitigated – as it was during missions in 2008 to counter piracy off Somalia’s coast – not the volatility of unrestricted warfare or the uncertain size of remaining drone and missile stockpiles. Many seafarers also have right of refusal when asked to sail in such conditions, even if some shipowners are willing to risk vessels and lives. Even a small number of attacks can therefore block a sea lane, because the many private, civilian actors that make up the shipping industry all must avoid even a single expensive loss, unlike a state at war, and because states trying to revive maritime traffic must virtually eliminate threats. The asymmetry in goals heavily favours those attacking ships – just a few mines can spoil a strait.

A successful effort to reopen a shipping lane by force – in the Black Sea – was also bad news for one of the world’s most powerful navies. After launching its all-out invasion in 2022, Russia attempted to strangle Ukraine’s seaborne exports, but instead saw its own warships chased out of the western Black Sea despite having previously wiped out the Ukrainian navy. A key contributor was Türkiye, a NATO member, which invoked a century-old treaty in refusing passage to Russian naval reinforcements through the Turkish straits into the Black Sea.

Prior to the Russian navy’s forced departure from the Black Sea, Moscow had been participating in the UN and Turkish-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement involving third-party coordination, inspection and deconfliction mechanisms, such as protected buffers around merchant ships and a designated corridor for shipping. Crucially, this arrangement was a potential boon to Russia’s exports (through a separate agreement signed the same day), as well as Ukraine’s. But Russia withdrew from the agreement after about a year, in part because of its perception that Ukraine was deriving greater economic benefit. 

The suppression of piracy off the coast of Somalia after a 2008 spike is seen as a success, though parallels to the Gulf are few. This effort involved dozens of navies in multiple coalitions and a series of UN Security Council resolutions including authorisation for the use of force. Perhaps most importantly, no actor that could pose a credible threat to warships opposed the initiative. The International Maritime Organisation helped establish a recommended sea lane called the Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor to concentrate commercial shipping for escorting and to facilitate insurance underwriting. That corridor and additional best practices agreed upon by major industry bodies helped keep shipping moving alongside naval escorts while some of the participating states staged attacks on pirates. The economic damage of piracy in major sea lanes was high, but the risks to naval escorts and patrols was negligible – almost the mirror opposite of the threat seen in the Strait of Hormuz.

Ideally, the ceasefire will hold, negotiations in Islamabad will gain traction, and the U.S. and Iran will reach an agreement that sees the war end and Iran allow the strait to fully reopen. Already, though, the ceasefire itself is in peril because of the lack of clarity about what Washington and Tehran actually agreed upon, particularly vis-à-vis Lebanon, and the hostilities subsequent to its announcement. Even if it holds, the two sides remain far apart in their negotiating demands, with both seeming bullish enough about their achievements in the war so far to press for maximalist positions.

If the current talks fall apart, Trump could return to his threats to escalate by hitting Iran’s energy and critical infrastructure, which Iran promises will trigger its own retaliatory strikes on similar infrastructure in Gulf Arab countries. The reverberations would not only shake the region, wreaking enormous destruction, but also further rattle much of the global economy, with the effects felt first and most by the world’s poorest, who will see spikes in the prices of food, cooking fuel and other necessities. The exact path to avoiding such a scenario is hard to foresee, given the uncertainty about what the negotiations will entail, whether other powerful countries affected by the strait’s closure will get involved and what option the parties might eventually accept, given their starting positions. 

As things stand, a narrow deal that sees Iran open the Strait of Hormuz permanently in exchange for an end to the war – in other words, a return to the pre-war status quo – seems far-fetched absent at least substantial sanctions relief. Control of the strait serves many strategic purposes for Iran. Tehran can calibrate its interference with maritime traffic as needed by adjusting the toll price and currency, changing the number of allowable crossings per day, or barring passage for certain states, nationals and types of cargo. This means of unilaterally influencing global commodity prices provides leverage in negotiations, a future deterrent against foreign pressure and a potential source of windfall revenues. Tehran may see collecting tolls as the only reliable way to fund post-war reconstruction – which is desperately needed in light of Israel’s attacks on profitable industries like petrochemicals and steel, as well as the wider damage the U.S.-Israeli bombardment has done – again, unless Washington puts significant sanctions relief on the table. 

Precisely how Iran will frame its demands for the strait remain unclear. Its shipping lane map suggests that, for now, it will keep insisting that shipping may resume at scale only if ships use the alternative corridor through its territorial waters, paying the fees that it levies – after the ceasefire, Iranian officials floated the idea of a $1 per standard barrel charge in cryptocurrency for laden oil tankers. Some analysts propose a variant by which Iran would continue to collect tolls and share revenue with the GCC states, with the funds to be used for reconstruction on both sides of the Gulf. Thus far, though, the Gulf Arab states have shown absolutely no interest in a solution that does not entail the strait fully reopening without impediment. Any toll payments would likely require some form of exemption to not violate U.S. and other sanctions on Iran, as well. Whatever the specifics, any effort to keep extracting transit fees will almost surely face stiff opposition from states worldwide that must bear the costs of what many will see as unlawful encroachment upon freedom of navigation that sets an ominous precedent. Most world capitals reject the idea of tolls for shipping that otherwise would have passed freely. 

In particular, it remains to be seen what pressure China, India and other Asian countries whose economies depend on the free passage of energy exports through the Strait of Hormuz might bring to bear on the parties. The pipelines and land exports that can move perhaps half the oil that previously went through the strait offer some relief to the Asian states bearing the brunt of the blockage. As noted, however, those routes may not survive an escalation by Iran or the Houthis. Iran’s formalisation of one if not two alternative routes through the strait adds to the outgoing flows, assuming other governments are prepared to live with paying the tolls over a longer period, the violation of maritime law and the implications for other critical international waterways. 

How the U.S. will tackle this issue in the forthcoming negotiations is another question. Washington is playing something of a mixed hand. If it were confident in its ability to open the strait militarily at an acceptable cost, it would likely have tried to do so already. Because of Iran’s location, its asymmetric tactics for controlling the strait create a strong deterrent, even for the U.S. navy, with its immense capabilities. While Trump could return to his threats of civilisational erasure to try gaining leverage, these played poorly in the U.S. – even some of his long-time supporters expressed revulsion – and little suggests they would be more successful in extracting concessions from Iran than they were the first time. 

At the same time, it seems unlikely that Trump would trade sanctions relief for reopening the strait without also addressing other longstanding points of friction. For the U.S., the status of Iran’s stockpile of fissile material appears to be the most important issue, though Washington has also made demands related to missile production and support for regional proxies, which are also points important to Gulf Arab allies, Israel and Trump’s fellow Republicans, as well as to European capitals. Indeed, were Trump to offer sanctions relief in exchange for the strait’s reopening, he would likely face criticism from both the U.S. left and right that the U.S. lost ground in the conflict. Hawkish Republicans are already expressing reservations about the ceasefire, seemingly out of concern that such an outcome could be in the offing. It may be a reflection of the bind he is in that Trump has mused aloud about a “joint venture” between the U.S. and Iran under which both states would collect tolls from ships passing through the strait. To the extent that this suggestion was serious (he has also called on Iran to stop collecting a toll), it would in effect allow Tehran and Washington to offset the costs of their war through fees charged to third parties – an arrangement that much of the rest of the world is likely to baulk at. 

Given that negotiating a lasting solution for the strait will almost certainly require protracted talks, one option is to negotiate earlier carveouts for essential commodities. Such a mechanism, like the UN’s proposal for getting such goods out to the world and into the Gulf, likely needs to be connected to this track because of regional opposition and Iran’s unwillingness to reduce its main leverage without greater gain. Internationally coordinated and inspected convoys of commercial ships without military escorts carrying humanitarian assistance, food and fertiliser or its intermediate ingredients might be undertaken before attempts to fully resume energy exports (including the natural gas needed as a nitrogen fertiliser input elsewhere in the world). The seaborne food imports on which the Gulf Arab states and Iran typically rely could be the first cargos approved in such an arrangement.

While the Black Sea and Somalia experiences offer imperfect comparisons to the Strait of Hormuz, any large-scale resumption of shipping will need layers of assurances through neutral monitoring and deconfliction bodies, agreed-upon ways of working like designated safe corridors and independence from any effort to open the strait by force. It will take time to negotiate an end to the war, but these limited intermediate measures could be adopted much sooner.