Qamar Bashir
When a superpower publicly discusses controlling a distant maritime chokepoint, boasts of secretly moving enormous oil volumes through it and subsequently supports a rival transit arrangement during an interim peace understanding, the other party is entitled to question whether it is negotiating with a peace partner or confronting an empire. Iran appears to have reached its own conclusion.
The attacks on commercial vessels were dangerous and, if deliberately directed against civilian shipping, legally indefensible. No political grievance automatically transforms an LNG tanker or crude carrier into a legitimate military target. Iran cannot demand respect for international law while disregarding the protection owed to civilian maritime traffic, and Tehran must answer for any deliberate attacks proven to have been carried out by its forces.
Condemning those attacks, however, does not require intellectual dishonesty about their strategic context. The vessels appear to have become instruments in a much larger confrontation. Iran was not necessarily attacking commercial ships because it regarded Qatar, Saudi Arabia or civilian crews as its principal enemies. Tehran appears to have been sending a brutal message that no alternative Hormuz navigation system could be operationalised by completely bypassing Iranian authority.
The ships were physically on the water, but the strategic message was directed at Washington. The United States responded with overwhelming military force, again attacking Iranian coastal radars, air defences, naval installations and IRGC assets. President Trump then declared the interim understanding effectively dead, reducing the fragile MoU to little more than a diplomatic memory.
Washington now presents this sequence as evidence that Iran cannot be trusted. Tehran, however, can legitimately ask the opposite question: at what stage was the United States trustworthy? Was it trustworthy when Trump claimed that millions of barrels of oil had been quietly moved through Hormuz while negotiations were developing and then publicly boasted about the operation?
Was Washington acting in good faith when Iran agreed to free commercial passage for 60 days and the United States subsequently backed a transit mechanism capable of neutralising Iran’s negotiating leverage? Was it respecting the spirit of an interim peace arrangement when President Trump repeatedly threatened to destroy Iranian bridges, energy supplies and critical infrastructure while negotiations towards a final agreement were still expected to continue?
A Memorandum of Understanding is not merely a collection of isolated sentences waiting to be exploited by clever lawyers. International agreements possess an object and purpose and create an expectation of good faith between the parties.
If Iran committed to opening Hormuz temporarily so that a permanent settlement could be negotiated, Washington could not reasonably expect Tehran to remain indifferent while the United States used the interim period to make Iran’s role in that permanent settlement increasingly irrelevant.
The United States may argue that Article 5 did not explicitly prohibit an alternative route through Omani waters. That is technically convenient but strategically incomplete.
The MoU also did not expressly authorise Washington and Oman to establish a separate American-protected passage capable of circumventing Iran’s approved system. The absence of an explicit prohibition cannot automatically become a licence for strategic sabotage of the agreement’s negotiating purpose.
This is where American power repeatedly collides with the international order Washington claims to lead. The United States invokes international law when demanding restraint from adversaries, yet when American strategic interests are involved, legal principles are frequently stretched around military realities.
Freedom of navigation becomes American naval supervision, regional security becomes permanent American military presence, deterrence becomes bombing, and negotiation becomes an opportunity to reduce an adversary’s leverage before the final bargain is reached.
Then, when the weaker state reacts, Washington begins the history of the conflict from the moment of reaction. Iran attacked the ships; therefore America bombed Iran. End of story.
Such selective chronology may serve political messaging, but a serious analysis of international affairs cannot erase the actions, threats and strategic manoeuvres that created the conditions for confrontation.
The Hormuz crisis is the consequence of accumulated actions by all parties. Iran must answer for attacks on civilian vessels, but the United States must equally answer for attempting to insert itself as the decisive military power in the management of a waterway where it possesses neither coastline nor territorial sovereignty.
Hormuz belongs geographically to the region, although its safe navigation is undeniably an international concern.
Iran and Oman are the two coastal states and should therefore form the core of a transparent maritime management system. Other Gulf states should participate wherever their legitimate commercial and security interests are involved, while international maritime institutions can provide technical assistance, monitoring and verification. What cannot be accepted as a permanent arrangement is the transformation of the U.S. Navy into the de facto government of the Strait of Hormuz.
America must therefore de-escalate, and de-escalation must mean more than suspending one round of air strikes. Washington should withdraw its direct armed enforcement role from the management of Hormuz and begin reducing the enormous military footprint through which the Middle East has become a permanent theatre of American power. Iran is not located off the coast of Florida, nor did it sail an invasion fleet towards California.
If the confrontation returns to full-scale war, America and Israel may destroy more Iranian infrastructure. Much of Iran’s military capacity has already suffered heavy attacks, meaning a further escalation could increasingly threaten power systems, oil installations, gas infrastructure, transportation networks and the foundations of civilian economic life. Iran would undoubtedly suffer immense pain.
Iran, however, would not suffer alone. American bases across the Middle East could come under attack, Israel would remain a primary Iranian target, Gulf infrastructure could be endangered and Hormuz could again become nearly impassable. Oil and gas prices could surge, shipping insurance could become prohibitive, supply chains could fracture and inflation could sweep through economies already struggling with debt and poverty.
Millions of people who have never seen Hormuz would pay for the war through higher prices for fuel, electricity, food and transportation. Iran does not claim to be the leader of the global economic order; the United States does. Leadership carries responsibility, and a country claiming guardianship of the international system must consider the global consequences of military actions undertaken thousands of miles from its own territory.
There remains time for diplomacy, and Pakistan should once again intervene. Islamabad should bring Washington and Tehran back towards negotiations and insist that the Hormuz dispute be separated from the wider military confrontation. Iran must stop attacks on commercial shipping, while the United States must stop bombing Iran and place the alternative Omani-side arrangement before negotiators rather than enforcing it through military power.
Iran and Oman should negotiate a single transparent navigation mechanism with the participation of concerned Gulf states and appropriate international maritime institutions. There should be no secret routes, no unilateral Iranian coercion, no American-controlled corridor and no military power acting as a toll collector. Above all, no superpower should pretend that aircraft carriers have transformed it into a coastal state.
The United States had an opportunity to make the MoU work. Instead, it appears to have treated Iranian restraint as a strategic opening through which Tehran’s last major bargaining asset could be weakened. Iran saw the emerging trap and reacted brutally; America answered with bombs, and once again the world is being told that the fire began only when Iran struck back.
The truth is harder. Washington did not merely lose Iran’s trust at Hormuz. It took an agreement designed to create peace, extracted the strategic benefit it wanted, moved towards bypassing the leverage Iran expected to negotiate and then reached again for overwhelming military force when Tehran refused to accept the emerging reality.
That is not the defence of an international order. It is the conduct of a hegemon increasingly convinced that agreements bind the weak while military power liberates the strong. If the United States genuinely wants peace, it must leave the management of Hormuz principally to the states that actually border it and support a lawful regional navigation arrangement.
If Washington instead wants control, it should stop pretending that resistance to its domination is unexpected. International law cannot remain a sermon delivered by the powerful to the weak. Either the law binds every state—including the United States—or Hormuz may become the place where the world finally admits that military power, not law, has become the true ruler of the international system.
The writer is Press Secretary to the President (Rtd),Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France,Former Press Attaché to Malaysia and Former MD, SRBC.He is living in Michigan, USA
