Iran trumps US on Hormuz

US President Donald Trump’s innate inability to empathise with others and lack of intelligence to foresee consequences are likely to hand Iran a long-term financial advantage and incidentally, but more importantly, threaten the treaty that has been the most productive of peace and prosperity in recent history – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Crispin Hull,June 30, 2026, https://www.crispinhull.com.au/2026/06/30/iran-trumps-us-on-hormuz/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=crispin-hull-column

The tit-for-tat breaches of the US-Iran 60-day ceasefire in the past few days certainly point that way. Let me explain.

Of 193 members of the UN, 44 are landlocked. The other 149 have coastlines linking each of their coastlines to the other 148 countries’ coastlines such that they can as a practical matter drive to those other nations by boat or ship with no natural barrier or no requirement to use easily blocked roads or railways.

The UN convention took eight years to negotiate in the 1970s. It was a triumph of diplomacy and law over the assertion of power and force. It resulted in one of the greatest trade-offs in history between powerful nations, on one hand, and less powerful nations, on the other.

In short, before the convention, powerful trading nations saw their economic interests in both the unfettered exploitation of the resources of the oceans and in having freedom of navigation across the oceans to help free trade, but ultimately they were willing to forgo the former in order to secure the latter.

The trade-off was enormous. Rich, powerful nations thought that freedom of navigation across the world’s oceans was so important for trade and hence prosperity that they were willing to grant poor and less powerful nations significant exclusive rights to their adjacent oceans in return for that freedom.

The question posed by the negotiators was how to achieve peace and greater prosperity. The answer was negotiation and compromise.

Each nation, even the militarily and economically weak, got the exclusive rights to all the ocean’s resources, particularly fishing and mining, up to 200 nautical miles from their shore and the total sovereign rights of territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles from their shore.

n return vessels from any nation, especially militarily strong and rich trading nations could sail anywhere on the oceans, but if they came within 12 nautical miles of another nation’s shores they had to inform that nation of their passage, and make their passage expeditious – no more lingering with menace close to other nations’ shores (gunboat diplomacy).

The arrangement facilitated trade and made the passage of warships less threatening. Good all round.

Before that, the three-nautical-mile limit was the general unwritten rule. Within that limit, nation states could do whatever they liked with their ocean and beyond that foreign vessels could do whatever they liked – from fishing to playing wargames.

Three nautical miles was of practical importance. In the nineteenth century that was the limit of a cannon shot. It meant that a ship outside that limit could not hit land and that land-based artillery could not hit a ship.

But It also meant that the nations either side of major choke points in world navigational routes – especially Gibraltar, Malacca and Hormuz – which did not have at least a little strip of international waters in the middle had to permit free passage of all vessels.

The latest US-Iran talks and spats over Hormuz, now puts this arrangement in jeopardy. At its narrowest Hormuz is less that 24 nautical miles wide. It means that the territorial waters of Iran to the north and Oman to the south overlap in the middle. It means any ship travelling through has to identify itself to either Iran or Oman and travel expeditiously, or it could be prevented from passage.

Under the ceasefire agreement Iran agreed to allow free passage, but the agreement was vaguely worded. Vessels seeking passage opted to travel as close to the Omani side as possible. Iran read that as a breach of the ceasefire and fired on those vessels. The US retaliated by hitting Iranian targets on the coastline.

It is clear that Iran wants to come to some arrangement with Oman to charge vessels fees in the future in return for passage rather than allowing Oman to let its side of the Strait be used for free safe passage. Whether those fees are characterised as fees for services or a toll, they will still be contrary to the convention. And once one nation starts, others will surely follow.

With drones and rockets we now have the reverse of the 19^th century position. Instead of a nation worrying about ship-based weapons firing on its land, ships now have to worry about land-based weapons firing upon ships.

It puts Iran in the box seat. With that threat in place Iran can insist on payment of a fee before guaranteeing safe passage. Iran can just use the insurance system to enforce payment. Without insurance no ship-owner will transit, and without guarantee of safe passage no insurer will grant insurance to a vessel.

All very foreseeable. But it would require thinking in a way that strategists usually think – asking the question: what would I do if I were in the enemy’s position? How would I react if I were the enemy? But Trump is incapable of viewing anything from any perspective but his own.

Arguably, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea has done more in the past 40 years to prevent hostilities and to create the certainty for shipping that generates trade and prosperity than all the force and threat of force that any single nation can muster.

But Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have always preferred force to negotiation.

From the start, they asked the wrong question and got the wrong answer. Netanyahu, facing an election this October, asked how could he stay in power after the Hamas-inspired attack on Israel in October 2023 so he does not have to face questions about how he allowed such a lapse of security? Trump asked, having torn up the well-negotiated Obama deal with Iran to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons, how can he ensure Iran does not get those weapons.

The wrong answer they got was: war. In Netanyahu’s case it was genocidal war. If only they chose negotiation and the rule of law rather than force, the world would not be facing an even stronger Iran and an indefinite economic threat to the world that its stranglehold over Hormuz now gives it.

If the world had insisted that Israel follow the 1947 UN resolution that called for the termination of the British Mandate and the partition of historic Palestine into independent, democratic Arab and Jewish states with guaranteed rights for all citizens, there would now be peace in the Middle East.

Trump has always preferred force and the threat of force over the rule of law – domestically and internationally. What he does at home is for the Americans to worry about. After all, they voted him into office. But there is little or no redress for those affected by what he does in the world – usually foolishly and impetuously.

That is why Australia should use whatever tools it has to steer international affairs towards the rule of law and negotiation and away from the use of force.