Iran announced on Thursday that it was drafting a “protocol” that would allow it to “monitor transit” by oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway Tehran has shut down, sending oil and gas prices soaring in the U.S. and across the world.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said tanker traffic through the narrow route “should be supervised and coordinated” between Iran and Oman, the two countries that border the strait, according to a translation of a report from Iran’s state news agency cited by CNBC.
“Of course, these requirements will not mean restrictions, but rather to facilitate and ensure safe passage and provide better services to ships that pass through this route,” Gharibabadi said according to the report.
President Donald Trump has suggested that the U.S. may leave it to other countries to end Iran’s de facto blockade of the strait, which it enforces by firing missiles at tankers. Trump has called on European nations to do so, but experts say Europe lacks the military resources to halt Iranian attacks on tankers for the long term.
Iranian and Omani officials did not respond to requests for comment from MS NOW.
For decades, the strait has been an international waterway, controlled by no country, that ships from all nations could transit.
Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and oil analyst at the Eurasia Group, said that if Iran manages to take control of the Strait of Hormuz permanently, it would be a “colossal win” for the country.
“It’s a massive strategic win, given that Iran has demonstrated that it can close the strait,” Brew told MS NOW. “It’s a huge financial win.”
Brew added that if Iran gains long-term control of the strait, it would be more powerful than it was before the Trump administration attacked it. Iran’s parliament passed a law to begin charging “tolls” of up to $2 million per ship, which could mean as much as $100 billion in annual revenue — or the equivalent of Iran’s current annual oil export earnings.
“It’s not innocuous,” Brew said, referring to the protocol announced on Thursday. “Iran has passed legislation and is now claiming to be coordinating with Oman in establishing joint management of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Brew predicted that Oman, which has less oil and wealth than other Gulf nations, may be willing to accept a temporary arrangement that could help end the conflict.
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“The Omanis are probably hedging; they’ve always tried to manage their relationship with Iran, and they lose relatively little by cooperating with Iran right now to ease pressure on the strait,” Brew said. “The bigger question is whether they continue to cooperate after the war.”
Ted Singer, a former senior CIA official who oversaw the agency’s operations in the Middle East, said Iranian officials are likely trying to see what they can achieve.
“I wouldn’t see this as a fork in the road,” Singer told MS NOW.
Singer, who served as a CIA station chief in five different countries over a 35-year career, said Iranian officials could be trying to stoke division between gulf countries.
“The Iranians are good at doing more than one thing at a time,” he said. “Why not stake out a maximalist position on tolls, then toss out options to roil the waters?”
The United Arab Emirates, for example, is adamantly opposed to Iran taking control of the strait.
“The Iranians play multi-dimensional chess,” said Singer, now a senior adviser to the Chertoff Group, a security consulting firm run by Michael Chertoff, who served as secretary of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration.
“Try to create division between Oman and the rest of the Gulf countries,” Singer said. “Why not fiddle around with this and see if something sticks?”
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Ian Sherwood is the director of international newsgathering for MS NOW, a former executive editor for NBC News and a former deputy Washington bureau chief for the BBC.