victor-intel
Oman spent last week writing the only Strait of Hormuz settlement that both Washington and Tehran had a reason to sign. It gave Iran a recognised role and a revenue stream, left every ship free to pass without paying and stayed inside what maritime law already permits.
victor-intel
Iran is holding the Strait of Hormuz closed to obtain a transit fee that the London marine market made commercially unusable six days ago.
victor-intel
The dispute over the Strait of Hormuz is being enforced out of London. A model insurance clause published on 23 July ends a ship's hull cover the moment its owner pays Iran's transit fee, and the same market has cut Red Sea cargo cover for vessels that have called at Saudi ports.
victor-intel
There is a ceasefire operating in the Gulf that nobody signed. Tehran published the rule, passed it to Washington through channels and both capitals are now observing it.
victor-intel
The American bombing of Iran stopped on Friday for the first time in thirteen nights, and the naval blockade kept running. That gap is the most informative thing to happen in this war in a week.
victor-intel
A ceasefire reached Tehran this week and did not survive the day. The offer was a ten-day halt in the strikes and the reopening of both shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran turned it down. A pause in the bombing was always the easy thing to arrange.
victor-intel
In the same week American aircraft entered a twelfth night of strikes on Iran, Washington signed a nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia that could open a uranium enrichment path on Saudi soil. The terms it reportedly leaves out are the ones the United States spent fifteen years insisting on.
victor-intel
Saudi Arabia's answer to a blocked Strait of Hormuz was always the same. Move the oil west by pipeline, load it at Yanbu on the Red Sea and sail it out past the Bab al Mandeb while the Gulf burns. For a year that escape sat untested.
victor-intel
In March Iran promised to spare the countries that host American forces and to strike only the bases themselves. By late July it was bombing Kuwait's water and power for the fourth day running and putting ordnance into the arms depots of the one Kurdish faction that had always been its friend.
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