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A fifth of the world's oil and much of its liquefied gas leave the Gulf through a passage about forty kilometres wide between Iran and Oman. Iran says it has the right to control what passes its coast and has closed the strait repeatedly since the war began in 2026. The United States says the strait is an international waterway and has used its navy to force it open and to blockade Iran's own ports.
The wider confrontation, its history and each side's full account: Iran in regional and international confrontation.
The strait is contested. In the past weeks the United States has struck Iranian launchers and tankers near it, Iran has declared a restricted zone beyond it and said it captured a US underwater drone, and a merchant ship was hit with one sailor killed. Talks in Oman between Iran and the Gulf states on a shared security arrangement were postponed.
Who decides who may pass. The shipping lanes run through the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Under the law of the sea most states hold that ships have a right of transit through such a strait that the coastal state may not suspend. Iran signed that convention but never ratified it, and accepts only a narrower right that it may suspend for its security. The United States invokes the convention's rule but has not ratified it either. Behind the law is leverage: the strait is the one place where Iran can hurt the world economy, and the one place where its own exports can be cut off.
These are our waters and our coast. When our ports are blockaded and our oil cannot leave, nobody else's will. Foreign navies brought the war here; the states of the Gulf can secure it themselves, and Iran has offered them an arrangement to do so.
No state may close an international strait or tax passage through it. Mining shipping lanes and firing on merchant ships is blackmail of the whole world, and the navy will keep the passage open, by force where needed.
Iran's leaves out that the ships it has struck and seized belonged mostly to states that were no party to the war, and that its own economy depends on the same passage.
The United States' leaves out that blockading Iran's ports is itself an act of war under the law it cites, that it has never ratified that law, and that the closures began only after it attacked.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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Their oil and gas must get out and, for Asia, get in. Most refused to join the American operation and looked instead for an arrangement with Tehran through Oman.