Why Iran and the US are fighting over Hormuz — Again

Iran and the United States aren’t fighting over a sentence in a peace deal; they’re fighting over who will shape the Gulf’s future, and the strait is just where that war is being settled.

An Argument Dressed Up as a Legal Dispute

That disagreement has now produced two rounds of real combat. In late June, Iran struck commercial vessels that transited without coordinating with Tehran, prompting US strikes on Iranian missile and drone sites. This week’s escalation was considerably larger: after Iran hit vessels in the strait while President Trump was attending the NATO summit in Ankara, the US launched strikes on roughly ninety targets across Iran, and Tehran retaliated against American positions in Bahrain and Kuwait. Trump called the ceasefire “over,” reinstated sanctions on Iranian oil exports the MOU had just suspended, and threatened to strike Iranian power and desalination infrastructure if the pattern repeats.

Is the dispute important enough for Washington to declare a ceasefire over and risk restarting a war that devastated Gulf capitals just months ago? The scale of the American response suggests the real issue was never the notification clause itself. What is being contested is who sets the terms for the strait and what those terms mean for the future of the Gulf — and, more broadly, for the global architecture of energy transport. Iran is not the only power with a stake in that outcome. China, the world’s largest oil importer and Iran’s principal oil customer, has quietly worked to keep the strait open on terms it can live with, cutting its own crude imports by roughly a third at the height of the blockade to ease pressure on global markets and signaling opposition to Iranian transit tolls in direct talks between Presidents Trump and Xi Beijing’s........

© New Eastern Outlook