If the United States\u2019 war with Iran evolved out of longstanding tensions over its nuclear program, the focus has shifted sharply to Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. The result is a chokehold on one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil supply and an acrimonious dispute that has returned the two sides to open conflict.<\/p>\n
Despite frequent assurances from President Trump that Iran has no navy and that the strait is open for passage, shipping traffic<\/a> has plummeted amid renewed Iranian strikes on commercial ships. Diplomacy has essentially halted, and over the weekend, U.S. and Iranian forces continued to trade attacks in the region. Military experts assess that trying to open such a narrow, vulnerable passageway with force in the middle of a war would be a deadly, Sisyphean task.<\/p>\n Casting about for answers, one analytical group has floated a possible compromise model for the Persian Gulf. It\u2019s based on a somewhat obscure, now-defunct treaty that once governed the collective production of coal and steel in Europe after World War II.<\/p>\n The group\u2019s proposal, outlined in a report published<\/a> this month, goes like this: The countries surrounding the Gulf would treat it as a shared territory \u2014 a regional commons of sorts \u2014 and charge a nominal fee only to oil tankers for the water\u2019s maintenance. That could fall within international law, satisfy Tehran\u2019s demand for enhanced control and give all eight states bordering the Gulf a stake in maintaining peace, the group said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we can\u2019t imagine a world where these countries are administering a nominal fee to do some maritime safety and environmental work, then that is sort of a bellwether of whether there\u2019s going to be some pathway to a more durable regional peace,\u201d said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, the founder and chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a London-based think tank focused on development and diplomacy in the Middle East and the broader region.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil we get this more basic kind of cooperation right, we\u2019re not going to be able to move forward on the bigger things,\u201d he added in a phone interview.<\/p>\n The main idea behind the proposal is that the Gulf situation is analogous to Europe at the end of World War II. Amid the struggle to recover from two bloody, devastating conflicts, Robert Schuman, France\u2019s foreign minister, rejected trying to isolate Germany the way it was after World War I.<\/p>\n Instead, France and Germany worked together to produce coal and steel, two key components for armaments, under an agreement known as the European Coal and Steel Community. That rendered war between the two historical rivals \u201cnot merely unthinkable, but materially impossible,\u201d Mr. Schuman said in a declaration<\/a> in 1950.<\/p>\n France and Germany were joined by Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, a coalition that ultimately led to the European Union.<\/p>\n Achieving such a union in the Gulf would mean overcoming multiple obstacles, not least the diverging political agendas and historical rivalries. Still, the current alternative, trying to pry open the strait using military force, would be daunting.<\/p>\n The Pentagon has planned for decades for how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a conflict, said Mara Karlin, a professor of national security issues at Johns Hopkins University who directed strategic military planning under the Biden administration as an assistant secretary of defense.<\/p>\n Mine sweeping is incredibly slow, strenuous work, and the few U.S. Navy ships designed to do it would be exposed, she said, so an armistice was always assumed as a precondition.<\/p>\n \u201cReopening has almost wholly focused on a permissive environment because it\u2019s just seen as too difficult to try to reopen and go through this painstaking process of clearing mines when one attack restarts the whole mission,\u201d she said. Planting just one new mine, or even threatening to plant one, can deter shipping.<\/p>\n Another method would be for the United States or some form of international coalition to provide escorts. This process was used by the U.S. Navy to protect Kuwaiti-flagged oil tankers under attack from Iran toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. That set off frequent skirmishes with Iranian forces, and one warship that struck a mine nearly sank.<\/a><\/p>\n The years since have seen the development of much more nimble threats from Iran that include drones and missiles fired from mobile launchers or the fast attack boats employed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, sometimes called its \u201cmosquito fleet.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we can neutralize their capacity to interdict shipping, but all it takes is one mosquito boat, a couple of mines or a few drones to get through, and you\u2019ve effectively blocked trade again,\u201d said Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to various countries in the region, including Iraq and Kuwait.<\/p>\n Neutralizing Iranian attacks would require extensive ground forces to control the long Iranian coastline, which would greatly ratchet up the risk of American casualties. \u201cI think the calculation has been to date that we can reopen the strait, but not on a timeline or at a cost that was considered acceptable,\u201d said Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.<\/p>\n Iran has insisted that Article 5 of the Memorandum<\/a> of Understanding that the United States and Iran signed on June 17 gave Tehran full authority over restoring normal shipping. It has accused the United States of trying to undermine its negotiating leverage by opening an alternative shipping channel that skirts the coastline of Oman on the western side of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n In their report, Mr. Batmanghelidj and his colleague Mehran Haghirian at the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation point out that sprawling Gulf ports like Jebel Ali in Dubai already charge service fees to ships that use their facilities, so it would not be a major leap to grant similar authority instead to a supranational body that divided the proceeds.<\/p>\n The most logical step, the authors said, would be to apply such fees on the largest oil tankers that transit the Gulf annually, including 600 massive supertankers that make multiple trips. The yearly value of oil shipments is around $600 billion, according to the International Energy Agency. The carriers would barely notice a small surcharge, and the tankers pose the biggest risk for environmental damage, the report said.<\/p>\n Six Arab Gulf states \u2014 Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, all U.S. allies \u2014 already belong to an organization called the Gulf Cooperation Council. Although generally effective when hammering out collective guidelines on mundane matters like industrialization, the organization is notoriously fractious when it comes to joint political action.<\/p>\n Adding Iran and Iraq to that mix could make the council even more volatile, a concern raised by some European officials, Mr. Batmanghelidj said. They view the Middle East as permanently riven by conflict, but France and Germany had the same reputation after World War II, he noted.<\/p>\n The major question is whether the United States and Iran would buy in.<\/p>\n The official Islamic Republic News Agency published a lengthy essay<\/a> on July 10 expressing interest in a collective settlement, and it also reprinted the Bourse & Bazaar proposal.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Strait of Hormuz is not merely a passageway for the transfer of goods and energy, but rather an opportunity for regional cooperation,\u201d the essay on IRNA said. \u201cIf managed properly, its economic and financial benefits can be shared more fairly among the countries of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n Iranian national security \u201cdepends on preserving the \u2018Iranian arrangements\u2019 governing the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran\u2019s Parliament and its chief negotiator, said in a statement<\/a> on Wednesday. At the same time, \u201cwe must also use the tools of diplomacy and negotiations to achieve and realize our national interests,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n How Mr. Trump might respond to such a proposal is anybody\u2019s guess. Top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have insisted that Hormuz return to the state of unfettered international navigation that was in place before the war.<\/p>\n