International Security and Law Analyst
As the US-Iran gap widens and President Trump brands the truce “on life support,” three competing visions of international law are struggling for mastery over the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Each captures part of the truth. None fully resolves the tensions.
The first, rooted in the peacetime law of the sea, asserts the enduring right of transit passage. Customary international law, reflected in UNCLOS Articles 38 and 44, imposes a continuing obligation on coastal states not to hamper navigation through a strait upon which one-fifth of the world’s oil depends.
In this view, the IRGC’s mining operations, swarm attacks and threatened tolls violate established norms governing international waterways.
The second perspective prioritises the law of armed conflict. Once hostilities began, the San Remo Manual and Hague Convention VIII became increasingly relevant. Belligerents gain expanded rights to mine, blockade and restrict.
Under this framework, the IRGC may claim some legal justification for defensive measures within its territorial waters. Yet the same body of law imposes strict limits: notification, self-neutralisation, distinction and protection of neutral shipping.
The third school focuses less on legal doctrine than on the practical limits of enforcement. Without a UN Security Council resolution, both sides operate in a grey zone where customary rules are asserted but difficult to enforce amid active hostilities.
Each framework has significant weaknesses. The peacetime approach underestimates how armed conflict alters the legal environment. The wartime framework risks legitimising measures whose consequences extend far beyond the immediate belligerents. The enforcement-focused view accurately describes the absence of central authority but offers little guidance for resolution.
A more coherent framework emerges through triangulation: integrating all three regimes.
Peacetime transit passage supplies the baseline obligation to keep the strait open to neutral commerce. The law of armed conflict supplies limited belligerent rights—proportionate blockades and defensive mining—subject to strict restraints of notification, self-neutralisation and proportionality.
Customary international law, shaped by the global importance of Hormuz, acts as the reconciling principle. It prevents any party from turning one of the world’s critical maritime arteries into a private toll road or permanent minefield.
Within this framework, the IRGC’s mining operations without adequate safeguards, combined with strikes on Persian Gulf Arab infrastructure, exceed legitimate defensive measures.
By attempting to globalise the conflict—compensating for its conventional military weaknesses by widening the economic costs—the IRGC has threatened the security interests of multiple states and strengthened arguments for collective self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
The US blockade, narrowly directed at Iranian ports and coastal areas while preserving neutral passage, appears to fit more comfortably within belligerent rights. Yet no legal arrangement can ignore the Iranian people themselves. They remain trapped between the repression of the IRGC and the economic pressure of the Hormuz stalemate.
Any workable regime must therefore include verifiable humanitarian channels: inspection mechanisms that protect energy security while ensuring essential supplies reach civilians. As in Iraq after the expulsion from Kuwait, the regime would inevitably divert portions of aid to its networks, yet some assistance would still reach ordinary citizens.
Such a framework cannot rest on American shoulders alone. European states, above all France with its defence commitments to the United Arab Emirates and its capable naval presence, would need to participate. The Combined Maritime Forces operating from Bahrain already provide the foundation for such a multinational mechanism.
Still, triangulation confronts one overriding reality. Safe corridors, mine-clearance verification, ceasefire monitoring and dispute resolution ultimately require a United Nations Security Council resolution. If Russia and China were prepared either to abstain or acquiesce, such a framework could open the path toward a formal armistice convention.
At present, however, the “ceasefire” remains little more than a pause. Despite President Trump’s declaration on April 8, the IRGC continued strikes on Persian Gulf Arab infrastructure until April 9. Absent a formal convention defining duration, obligations and enforcement mechanisms, the fog of war and the fog of law will continue to thicken together.
During the 1956 Suez Crisis, President Eisenhower withheld support from Britain, France and Israel, helping force the operation’s collapse. Today the strategic balance is markedly different: the United States under President Trump enjoys overwhelming military superiority, while Russia and China lack the Soviet Union’s former capacity to directly challenge American power in the region.
Yet many governments and commentators increasingly frame the present stalemate as a strategic success for Tehran despite the immense economic, military and diplomatic damage sustained by the Islamic Republic.
Should the current deadlock persist, the IRGC is unlikely to ease either regional escalation or internal repression. If negotiations prove illusory, President Trump—who has repeatedly spoken of regime change—may face growing pressure from regional allies, particularly Israel and the UAE, to move from rhetoric toward a more explicit strategy aimed at dismantling the current power structure in Tehran.
The Strait of Hormuz is now more than a naval theatre. It has become a test of whether international law and diplomatic statecraft can contain a conflict that the IRGC is actively seeking to globalise.
Even if hostilities continue, the world may soon face a difficult question: whether to construct such a framework now, or wait for both the fog of war and the costs of paralysis to deepen further.
