Strait talk: Iran’s Hormuz attacks must end the ‘phony peace’

An early period of World War II was known as “the phony war.” 

What we may be witnessing now in the US-Iran war is the end of a “phony peace.”

The nearly five-month-long conflict has featured a couple of sham ceasefires, each marked by supposed Iranian pledges to re-open the Strait of Hormuz that came to nothing.  

With the Iranians firing on shipping on the Strait again, President Donald Trump has declared the so-called memorandum of understanding signed about a month ago a dead letter.

After lifting sanctions on Iranian oil and ending the US blockade of Iranian ports, Trump has re-instituted both.

He maintains that the United States will control the Strait, and at some point charge a 20% fee on all shipping for our trouble (one assumes that this idea, at variance with our contention that tolling the Strait is illegal, will be a non-starter).

It was clear a couple of days into the war that the Strait of Hormuz had become the key strategic variable, and that Trump wouldn’t easily be able to walk away from the conflict without opening the Strait again.

The MOU was an illusory means of achieving this goal via diplomacy.

The problem is that we thought — or wanted to believe — that the agreement said the Iranians would allow unobstructed passage again, while the Iranians thought — or wanted to believe — it said that they would control it. 

That the MOU was subject to these starkly divergent understandings made it, in truth, a memorandum of obfuscation. 

The Iranians, of course, aren’t operating in good faith — but it’s a point in their favor that the MOU didn’t simply say, “There shall be freedom of navigation in the Strait.” 

Instead, it talked of how the Iranians would “make arrangements” for ensuring “the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only.”

In other words, the Iranians had the whip hand in the Strait and could charge a fee for transit after a two-month interval.

Furthermore, the MOU specified that Iran would conduct dialogue with Oman “to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Amazingly enough, then, a war that had started with optimistic talk of toppling the Iranian regime was ending with an agreement allowing the Iranians to figure out how to run a waterway vital to the international economy that they hadn’t controlled at the outset of the conflict. 

Is it any wonder that the Iranians, who must have been stunned at the success of their gambit in the Strait, have been pressing their luck?

It must have emboldened them even more to hear Trump say that he was eager for the MOU because the economic costs of Iranian disruption of the Strait threatened to make him a new Herbert Hoover.

Effectively turning over the control of the Strait to the Iranians — coupled with the inconclusive US war against the Houthis to try to eliminate their threat to shipping in the Red Sea — would have been a black mark on Trump’s record regarding a long-standing tenet of American grand strategy. 

Freedom of navigation has always been considered essential to US national security and a linchpin of global commerce.

Trump is right to want to take back the Strait.

The question, though, is whether he will be willing to apply enough force, and have the staying power, to bring a battle for the Strait to a successful conclusion.

The domestic politics are difficult, given that the American public is not supportive of the war and has now been repeatedly told that it is about to end with a brilliant diplomatic deal.

While we have an enormous firepower advantage, the Iranians have proven that they can disrupt the Strait with threats and a few projectiles.

They aren’t going to give up their strategic windfall easily, as two bogus, but highly touted, peace deals now demonstrate.

X: @RichLowry