In the wake of the forty-day war between Iran and the United States-Israel, no one expected that the governing legal regime of the Strait of Hormuz would undergo a fundamental transformation. Tehran’s stance, emerging from the recent war, is not be a return to the previous legal order of free transit, but rather a fundamental reorientation of rights and responsibilities within this chokepoint.

Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly and Iranian top negotiator after the demise of Ayatollah Khamanei, has emphasised the Islamic Republic’s complete control over the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic chokepoint. He reiterated: “Traffic through this passage will only be carried out based on designated routes and with Iran’s permission. The opening or closing of the Strait of Hormuz and its regulations will be determined by the ‘field’ (Iran’s military forces) and based on national interests, not foreign claims.”

The linchpin of this new posture rests on the collapse of the doctrine of innocent passage for a specific category of vessels—namely, those flagged to the United States and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf that served as launching pads for military aggression against Iran. In its maritime zones’ law of 1993, Iran assumed the “right of innocent passage”, rather than “transit passage”, as the basis for its territorial waters and Hormuz Strait. Iran did not ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which assumes transit passage for the straits such as Hormuz. According to this convention and the 1958 Geneva Convention on seas, innocent passage requires that a ship not be prejudicial to the peace, good order, or security of the coastal state.

In Iran’s opinion, when a country’s warships and commercial vessels have been involved in a military campaign directly or indirectly that has bombarded Iranian territory, their passage can no longer be deemed “innocent” in any meaningful legal sense.

In Iran’s opinion, when a country’s........

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