victor-intel
The United States commands the Gulf and cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It can strike Iran daily, blockade its ports and sail warships beside the tankers, and the ships still will not go, because whether a captain sails is a judgement about danger and not about the navy at his side. Closing the
victor-intel
For a month Washington told the world that no nation may charge for passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The week its war with Iran reopened, it named itself the strait's Guardian and claimed a fifth of every cargo crossing the water. The toll lasted days before Washington let it lapse, and the lap
victor-intel
A naval blockade is a blunt object, and it does not choose a target inside the government it squeezes. Yet the siege Washington restarts against Iran this week did exactly that the last time it ran, and the faction it strengthened is the one now left holding a failed deal. The blockade produced June
victor-intel
Iran spent this month being handed a way out of the Hormuz crisis, and it refused. The offer on the table dropped the tolls Iran wanted gone and preserved an Iranian say over its own waters, then Iran rejected it and fired missiles at the Gulf states that brokered it. The refusal reveals what the st
victor-intel
Iran has begun charging for passage through the Strait of Hormuz by political alignment. China, named a friendly country, is offered a discount. Everyone outside the friendly list pays full mandatory fees and risks attack for using any route Iran does not authorize. The world's most important oil ch
victor-intel
Iran signed the Geneva MoU on June 19. Four days later, it attacked vessels using the International Maritime Organization's sanctioned alternative corridor along the Oman coast. The enforcement phase of Iran's Hormuz management claim had already begun before the diplomatic ink dried.