When an Iranian official this week laid out a list of demands to end the war started by the United States and Israel, he added an item that hadn’t been on Tehran’s list before: recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
The narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) ordinarily passes has emerged as the Islamic Republic’s most potent weapon. And it is now seeking to turn into both a source of potentially billions of dollars in annual revenue and a pressure point on the global economy.
Iran has long threatened to close the strait in case of an attack, but few expected it to follow through – or for it to prove so effective in disrupting global trade flows. The scale of the impact appears to have expanded Tehran’s ambitions, with the new demands suggesting it is seeking to turn that leverage into something more durable.
Seeing how well Iran did actually close and keep selectively closed the Strait of Hormuz it seems fair to give them the sovereignty.
Iran is on one side of the strait, Oman is on the other. Giving Iran sovereignty would mean taking away sovereignty from Oman. Countries are supposed to be able to control their own coastlines and territorial waters.
The strait is narrow enough that there is no buffer of international waters in the middle at its narrowest. Giving one country sovereignty of the whole strait would mean violating the the sovereignty of another. Not a fair proposition.
Oh man not Oman
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By international treaty, in a maritime border were one country is in one side and a different one in another, like that, the border sits right smack in the middle, equidistant of both sides, so soverignty over that Straight is divided.
What Iran has at the moment is the power to limit what passes there, but Oman could have the exact same thing if they so chose, since Oman too could do the same thing - for exactly the same reason Oman cannot stop Iran from attacking ships there (it’s a lot harder to protect civilian ships in range of land-based artillery/drones than to attack them), Iran would not be able to stop Oman from doing exactly the same.
So if Iran tried to have actual sovereignty over the whole Straight (full control, not just the ability to stop traffic there), Oman could fuck them up by doing exactly the same thing that Iran is doing now - it’s a game that two can play.
It’s generally agreed to officially put the border (and assign sovereignty) right in the middle in a situation like that exactly because otherwise the country on the side which “lost” would start fucking things up in that channel for all users.
The only way for Iran to officially get sovereignty of the whole Straight would be to conquer and occupy the land on the other side, and I doubt Iran has the capability to do so.
How can sovereignity be shared?
It can’t, I thought. I was asking like, “Sovereignty can be shared?” Not like “Sovereignty can be shared?!”
There’s this clunky thing standing in the way of that, called international law.
What, we suddenly give a shit about that again?
Just when the “bad guys” are breaking it, when it’s our guys, breaking stupid international law is OK.
So both the US and Iran are breaking international law against each other.
But Iran is also breaking the right given by international law against neutral nations in this conflict. By restricting their right to shipping. Those nations have every moral and legal right to complain about Iran.
Yeah launching a perfidious war of aggression is a flagrant breach of Article 2 of the UN charter. Bombing nuclear sites, schools, hospitals and energy infrastructure are all grave war crimes but nobody gives a shit about that in Western media apparently.
Let’s not even get into the genocide happening in Gaza.
International law only seems to animate the West when they’re lecturing brown people.
The UAE or Oman could probably do that as well if they wanted to.
Not really. You basically have to be either a superpower or a pariah state to do something like this and not be immediately pummeled into oblivion.
They could just target any ships from or to Iranian ports or of nations which support Iran with artillery or drones.
It’s exactly because it’s so stupidly easy to attack civilian ships in a space like that whilst it’s very hard to defend against it that Iran is able to do so even whilst under attack by American and Israel, so the country on the other side could do the same thing and only target Iranian or Iran-related ships.
Two can play the “fuck the other side’s ship” game there.
Exactly. 90% of Iran’s oil leave by sea, via Kharg island.
If Iran turns to piracy by threatening “pay or we sink your ships” at all other nations, then all other nations should just confiscate all Iran’s ships in return.
Oil revenues are 35% of Iran’s budget. This should not be a can of worms that Iran wants to open.
Stockholm syndrome much?