Thirty-six hours after a ceasefire was declared, Iran flexed a newfound power by refusing to open the world’s most important energy waterway.
Iranian officials have demanded ships pay a “toll” of up to $2 million per vessel to Tehran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz — a step that could generate up to $100 billion a year. The money would likely benefit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is responsible for Iran’s ballistic missile program and rules the country with an iron hand.
Gregory Brew, a senior Iran and energy analyst with the Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk consulting firm, told MS NOW Iran’s new control of the strait has given it more leverage than it had before the war.
“Despite weeks of bombing, Iran is in a stronger position now that it has demonstrated it can close the strait,” Brew said. “In effect, it can take the global economy hostage at any time it wants.”
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that the strait was closed.
“We have seen an uptick in the strait today,” she told reporters. “And I will reiterate the president’s expectation and demand that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened.”
Asked who currently controlled the Strait of Hormuz, though, Leavitt declined to answer.
At the end of the first day of the ceasefire, it was clear that the answer was Iran.
Kpler, a ship-tracking firm, reported just four cargo ships, and no oil tankers, passed through the strait on Wednesday. Hundreds of tankers remained stuck, unable to pass through a waterway that more than 130 ships traversed daily before the war.
“Hundreds of vessels remain in the region, including 426 tankers,” the firm said. “Many of which had been effectively stranded during the disruption.”
And on Thursday morning, an unnamed senior Iranian source told TASS, Russia’s state-run news agency, that no more than 15 vessels a day would be allowed to pass through the strait, Reuters reported.
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For decades, the strait has been an international waterway that guaranteed a longstanding free trade principle: freedom of peaceful navigation. The United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea, enacted in 1994, guaranteed that right. While 172 countries have ratified the U.N. convention, the U.S. and Iran have not.
“Not having ratified the convention doesn’t give [Iran] total freedom of action in the Strait of Hormuz,” Julien Raynaut, the head of the French Association of Maritime Law, a trade group, told The Associated Press. “It remains subject to international law and notably this customary right of passage.”
Other passages, such as the English Channel, Strait of Gibraltar and the Malacca Strait, are also considered international waterways. Canals, such as the Suez and Panama, are allowed to regulate traffic and charge tolls.
The Trump administration has appeared hamstrung by two early decisions it made in its war with Iran. It decided that air power alone would be enough to force the regime to capitulate, and it did not build a large coalition of nations to be part of its effort, which may have allowed it to assemble a large fleet of warships that could threaten to reopen the strait by force — or actually do so if those threats fell short.
As a result, Iran has been able to use the strait as an economic weapon, analysts have said, closing it down and increasing the prices of oil globally.
“What Iran did, systematically and deliberately, was hurt the U.S. economy,” Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow and Iran expert at the Middle East Institute, told The Wall Street Journal. “They made sure the war was felt in the U.S.”
Brew said Iran’s control of the strait is its newest and most powerful weapon against the U.S.
“That’s worth more than the nuclear program, the missile program, and all its proxies put together,” he said.
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.