What to Know About Iran’s ‘Selective’ Closure of the Strait of Hormuz—and Why It Matters
As the hours count down to President Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face U.S. bombs on its civil infrastructure, the first of seven stranded Malaysian ships safely passed through the narrow waterway that has effectively been closed to most of the world.
“We had said that the Islamic Republic of Iran does not forget his friends,” the Iranian Embassy in Malaysia said in a post on X on Monday, announcing the ship’s passage.
Days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the strait was “closed” to the U.S., Israel, and countries that supported their attacks. The effective closure of the strait has led to major disruptions to the world’s energy flows, sending oil prices above $100 per barrel and threatening to cripple many economies that rely on energy from the Middle East. Prior to the start of the war, around 135 vessels transited through the Strait of Hormuz per day. That number fell dramatically to a total 116 crossings between March 1 and March 25, according to the Financial Times.
Read More: Why Iran Thinks It’s Winning
For weeks, the Trump Administration has sought to portray higher energy prices as a blip and the strait’s closure as a temporary problem. The strait “could be open tomorrow if Iran stops threatening global shipping,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 26. Trump and his officials have also repeatedly suggested the chokepoint is a problem for the rest of the world to solve, since the U.S. is relatively less dependent on Middle Eastern oil, after NATO allies and other countries rebuffed Trump’s efforts to recruit their warships to secure the strait. And even as the strait remains effectively closed and attacks across the Middle East continue, Trump has claimed Iran is militarily defeated and even suggested that the U.S. could charge tolls for passage through the strait.
“What about us charging tolls? I’d rather do that than let them have them. Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner. We won,” Trump told reporters on Monday. The President said he would also like to seize Iranian oil, “because it’s there for the taking. There’s not a thing they can do about it.”
At the same time, Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges—which could constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions—and even to “take out” Iran in “one night” come Tuesday, 8 p.m. E.T., if Iran does not open the strait.
The outlook appears grim. Both Iran and the U.S. have rejected each other’s cease-fire proposals. Iranian officials have insisted that any cease-fire has to result in a permanent cessation of attacks from the U.S. and Israel; without that guarantee, Iran is unwilling to fully reopen the strait or give up its enriched Uranium stockpile, which were reportedly terms in the 15-point proposal from the U.S. that Iran rejected. But any trust Iran had in the U.S. has been broken before: the two countries were in the middle of renewed negotiations towards a nuclear agreement—previously disrupted by Israeli and U.S. attacks last June—when Trump launched the Feb. 28 strikes on Iran. And Iran has seen Israel carry out attacks against Lebanon and Gaza even after previous cease-fires in those conflicts were reached, Iranian officials said.
Future control
Several countries have turned to negotiating directly with Iran to strike deals allowing their vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Ships flying the flags of Pakistan, India, Thailand, Russia, Turkey, China, Iraq, and now Malaysia have safely traversed the strait at some point since the war began. The details of the deals struck with Iran are not yet clear. American allies appear less keen to negotiate individual deals with Iran to allow for the passage of their vessels, although France and Italy reportedly opened talks with Iran last month.
Andrea Ghiselli, a lecturer in international politics at the University of Exeter and head of research at the ChinaMed Project, tells TIME that the deals Iran is making with other countries to allow for passage through the strait “undermine U.S. leverage” in the face of Trump’s threats. Iran is demonstrating its ability to manage the strait, Ghiselli adds, without U.S. involvement.
“Iran has already demonstrated the power of its card,” says Liu Jia, a research fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore.
In the short term, the deals allow Iran to place pressure on countries not to become militarily involved alongside the U.S. and Israel, while at the same time easing pressure on Iran by acting as a potential source of revenue and allowing for Iranian oil sales to continue, Ghiselli says.
In the past week, transit through the strait split into a two-corridor system: an IRGC-controlled northern corridor and a southern corridor along the Omani coastline through which several vessels have already passed. The development followed ongoing discussions between Iran and Oman.
Countries around the world face a difficult balancing act, says Amit Ranjan, a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. Strike a deal with Iran to let their vessels through, which for many countries is a matter of survival, but risk upsetting Trump, who has shown himself willing to upend even longstanding relationships.
“If Iran adopts a strategy of selective closure—targeting the United States, Israel, and their allies while allowing passage for friendly states,” Liu says, Gulf states “may seek to repair relations with Iran or develop alternative export routes, which could increase costs in the short to medium term.” Liu adds that Gulf states that have suffered retaliatory attacks by Iran may also be “compelled to reassess their defense strategies,” including whether “hosting U.S. military bases enhances their security or, conversely, increases their exposure to attacks” by U.S. adversaries.
Analysts say that Iran’s wartime moves to restrict access through the strait could create an opportunity for the nation to reenter the global economy and international diplomacy after years of isolation imposed by heavy global sanctions. Iran is laying the “foundation” for “strengthening its control over the strait in the long term,” says Ghiselli.
The IRGC Navy said on Sunday that the strait will “never return to its former state,” especially for the U.S. and Israel. What the new form of the strait will look like is not yet clear. As part of the terms of its 10-point proposal that Trump rejected, Iran reportedly said it would reopen the strait while charging up to $2 million per vessel, which it would split with Oman and use its share of the proceeds to reconstruct infrastructure destroyed by the U.S. and Israel. The fees would act as a kind of war reparations, says Ghiselli, while allowing Iran to institutionalize its management of the shipping route.
Governments may fear that an Iran-controlled shipping route could set a precedent for other countries in similar geographic positions to do the same, leading to broader risks to free maritime trade, Ghiselli says. A coalition of more than 40 governments has formed to try to pressure Iran to reopen the strait. On Tuesday morning, the U.N. Security Council is also expected to vote on a draft resolution encouraging states to coordinate defensive efforts to secure the strait and demand Iran cease attacks on merchant vessels transiting the waterway. Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Jordan have advocated for using force if necessary to ensure maritime security in the region. But China, which was among the first countries to strike a deal with Iran allowing its ships to pass through the strait, Russia, and France opposed authorizing the use of force as part of the resolution.
“It’s part of the bargain between Beijing and Tehran: one can offer diplomatic protection and support while the other ensures the upkeep of providing oil,” Ghiselli says. Regardless, he says, even countries that have deals with Iran, including China, will likely oppose the long-term institutionalization of any toll mechanism or control over the strait.
“The perceived solution [for Iran] is permanent control of the strait—providing services, collecting fees, and, most importantly, securing not just the Persian Gulf but a valuable lever over the global economy,” Mohammad Eslami, a research fellow at the University of Tehran, and Zeynab Malakouti, a senior fellow at the Global Peace Institute, wrote in the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft last week. “After the war, Iran will likely try to re-enter the international economy by striking a quiet but crucial deal with nearly every country: secure passage through the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for recognition of the new Iranian framework and payment.”
Liu tells TIME that, if Iran successfully institutionalizes a toll system, the choice of currency could be consequential. “Should Iran favour the euro or the Chinese Yuan, this could challenge the dominance of the petrodollar system and, by extension, the U.S. dollar’s position in the global economy,” Liu says. And with the U.S. economy already strained by the war, “the economic pressure on the U.S. could cause a broader global economic crisis,” she adds.
Iran could also try to revive a version of the Hormuz Peace Endeavor (HOPE), which it had proposed in 2019, according to Eslami and Malakouti. The framework sought to promote regional security and cooperation among Persian Gulf states without external military involvement.
“The dilemma of the Strait of Hormuz has no military solution,” wrote Eslami and Malakouti. “Trump has miscalculated again. He is trying to win the battle; Iran is focused on winning the war.”