Why the Strait Obeys None of the “Laws” of the Last Five Centuries — and Why 2026 Proves It
From my window in Muscat, I count the anchorage lights.
On March 2, 2026, the Revolutionary Guards announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Six weeks later, twenty thousand sailors are still stranded aboard two thousand ships. Brent crude has surged by 65 percent in a single month, while the island of Larak — rechristened “Tehran’s Toll Booth” by Lloyd’s List — is charging two million dollars per transit, payable in yuan or stablecoins.
International law formally prohibits the closure of a navigational strait. Yet in Hormuz, law has never carried much weight.
From the Omani coast, I keep hearing that nothing has changed in five centuries.
In a remarkable investigation published in New Lines Magazine, Amelia Hankins lays out the chronology:
Albuquerque, in 1507, had the cannons without the land.
Abbas, in 1622, had the land without the fleet — and Abbas prevailed.
Beginning in 1820, the British imposed their maritime order by inventing piracy.
Iran, today, would impose its own by turning the strait into a toll gate.
Whoever controls the land controls the passage, correct?
Elegant. But false.
The Day a Fleet Settled the Matter
On April 18, 1988, Operation Praying Mantis destroyed roughly half of Iran’s naval capability within hours: two oil platforms, the frigate Sahand, a patrol vessel, and several fast attack boats.
Three months later, Tehran accepted United Nations Resolution 598 and signed a ceasefire with Baghdad. A naval power, without holding a single piece of territory in the Gulf, had settled a strait conflict.
Brutally. Decisively. In a single day.
Five centuries of repetition do not prove a law, but a habit. And habits change the moment someone has an interest in changing them.
What Geography Does Not Decide
In Hormuz, the real variable has never been land versus sea.
It has always been this: who can impose on the other a price greater than what he himself is willing to pay.
The Portuguese did not lose for lack of territory, but because their taxation strangled merchants far more than the Safavids ever did.
Abbas prevailed in 1622 not because he controlled the coastline, but because he successfully turned the English against the Dutch by monetizing the silk of Isfahan. The Dutch would learn this at their expense in 1645, when their first blockade of the strait collapsed over Abbas II’s simple refusal to grant them an audience.
The Qawasim, in 1819–1820, yielded not because of maritime inferiority, but because London financed a narrative — Arab piracy — powerful enough to rally the littoral powers, including Oman.
Each time, the strait fell to whoever could impose an unbearable bill upon the other side.
Geography was scenery. Price was the plot.
2026: Three Ruptures, No Fatality
Washington is not acting today as it did in 1988 because some timeless law is once again asserting itself.
The Americans hesitate because:
I. Tehran Has Acquired What It Previously Lacked
Namely, precision ballistic missiles in significant quantities.
Where Praying Mantis cost a handful of aircraft and three sailors, an equivalent operation today would expose Al Udeid, Al Dhafra, the aircraft carriers of the Fifth Fleet, and Tel Aviv to missile salvos that Gulf air defenses could intercept only partially.
Forty years later, the same decision would cost one hundred times more — and everyone knows it.
II. China Has Become the Shock Absorber
Before the crisis, China was purchasing 90 percent of Iranian oil. It now finances its circumvention through Pakistani ports.
From my window, I can see the direct consequence: Duqm, Salalah, and Sohar, where drone strikes are multiplying because these Omani terminals have become the system’s pressure valve.
The toll is collected in yuan.
In 1988, nobody absorbed the shock on Tehran’s behalf. In 2026, someone does — and that fact alone changes the equation.
III. American Political Time Has Collapsed
Where Ronald Reagan could withstand six months of confrontation without collapsing in the polls, Donald Trump no longer enjoys that luxury.
Iran — fully aware of this — is playing for time, much as Abbas refused the English carriage in 1621 to demonstrate that time was on his side.
As for the “Project Freedom” announced from Washington to escort cargo ships by force, it will fail — not for lack of territory, but for lack of patience.
What One Sees from Muscat
Oman occupies the role it has almost always held: mediator, ambiguous actor, indispensable intermediary.
The Sultanate maintains a diplomatic channel between Washington and Tehran while simultaneously enduring strikes intended to shut down its bypass ports.
From the Muttrah Corniche, I can perceive what long-term historical frameworks conceal.
The Strait of Hormuz functions like a market in which every actor reassesses, in each crisis, the cost of closure against the value of reopening.
Only volatile parameters — weapons systems, alliances, currencies, electoral calendars — decide.
Hankins concludes her account with the wives of pearl divers throwing stones into the sea and plunging living cats into the water so that their men might be returned alive.
Today, it is Filipinos, Georgians, Ukrainians, and Egyptians calling the International Transport Workers’ Federation at three in the morning whenever they manage to catch a signal.
The ritual has changed. The distress has not. The only true winner?
Surely the cold calculation of what each side is prepared to lose.
The Comfort of Fables
Geographical fables are comforting because they spare us the burden of thinking.
Does Hormuz obey a five-century law?
Very well — let us spare ourselves the analysis of missiles, yuan, and electoral calendars. Let us simply conclude that the toll must be negotiated, and move on.
But if Hormuz obeys nothing except a balance of power renegotiated by every generation, then the question once again becomes what it has always been — political, and therefore terrifying.
At what price? Against whom? How far?
From my window, the ships are waiting.
Not for the repetition of the past. Only for someone, somewhere, to set a price.
View from the heights of Jebel Harim (around 2,000 m), the highest point of the Musandam Peninsula — an Omani exclave separated from the rest of the sultanate by the United Arab Emirates. In the distance, the Strait of Hormuz separates the Arabian coast from Iran’s Hormozgan mountains, some 30 km away.
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