Strait of Hormuz is a shipping channel to the United States; but to Iran, it’s a sovereign soil guarded with the same resolve Iran showed centuries ago. Iran continues to treat the strait as a border wall rather than as a waterway, four hundred years after the Portuguese were driven out of Hormuz. The Portuguese controlled the fortress-island of Hormuz for a century starting from 1507 AD till 1622, when Shah Abbas I of Safavid Persia, besieged and drove out the Portuguese garrison, re-establishing Persian dominance over the waterway. That incident is constantly engraved in Iranian political memory and people as evidence that Iranian sovereignty over Hormuz has always been the prime. Hormuz’s importance to international trade was however since then, rarely put to the test till the current crisis which has reawakened the giant, as a real pressure point for the global economy. Reports closure 2026 describing tanker traffic collapsing and oil prices surging past $100 per barrel within days of the strait closing, rippling through fuel prices, insurance costs, and shipping schedules for economies far beyond the Gulf.
The most lucid perspective on this impasse is provided by classical realism. According to this theory, states act to maximize security and power in anarchic environments where self-help shaped behaviors, since no higher authority can ensure everyone’s safety. The recent strikes by US are the epitome of realism; they are pressure tactics intended to change the balance of power prior to securing a final agreement. Iran’s defense of its sovereignty through closure of Hormuz is also a defensive realism strategy, in which a comparatively weaker military force uses its geographic advantage to counterbalance the overwhelming military advantage of its enemy. In addition, Iran has another geographical tool whose influence extends beyond Hormuz. The Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a tiny chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula through which significant Suez trade headed for Europe flows, has also been identified by Iran as a potential second front in case the conflict intensifies.
With continuous bombing by US / Israel on Iran and reciprocating response by Iran by attacking US bases in middle east and closing Hurmuz, situation is now becoming worse day by day and resulting into declining currencies, interrupted oil shipments, inflation, casualties, infrastructure damages, domestic and global pressures. This is similar to what conflict-resolution scholars refer to as a mutually hurting stalemate, which the condition ripeness theory views as the prerequisite for a true settlement; neither side can turn further escalation into a decisive victory, and continuing to fight only adds expense, echoing the older bargaining logic that coercive threats work best up until both sides are equally fatigued. In such a situation, role of mediator is always very important, which Pakistan is playing excellently and already a driving force behind the Islamabad Memorandum.
As a way forward, respecting the current agreement rather than creating a completely new one is the better course of action. Relying on Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding would allow both capitals to bank the diplomacy. Wars fought over straits tend to end not with total victory but with exhaustion turning into arrangement, and the scaffolding for that arrangement is already sitting on the table in Islamabad. Sometimes the shortest distance between war and peace is simply the courage to accept, what you already agreed to.
The writer is former director CASS & also Phd scholar.
