Iran and the United States aren’t fighting over a sentence in a peace deal; they’re fighting over who will shape the Gulf’s future, and the strait is just where that war is being settled.

An Argument Dressed Up as a Legal Dispute

On paper, the latest collapse looks almost bureaucratic. The June memorandum of understanding that ended the seven-month US-Israel war on Iran committed Tehran, under Article 5, to “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” through the Strait of Hormuz. That single clause has been read two entirely different ways. Tehran insists it retains the right to be notified of, and effectively approve, any vessel’s transit; Washington insists the clause only obliges Iran not to interfere and that ships are free to use either the Iranian or Omani channel without asking Tehran’s permission.

That disagreement has now produced two rounds of real combat. In late June, Iran struck commercial vessels that transited without coordinating with Tehran, prompting US strikes on Iranian missile and drone sites. This week’s escalation was considerably larger: after Iran hit vessels in the strait while President Trump was attending the NATO summit in Ankara, the US launched strikes on roughly ninety targets across Iran, and Tehran retaliated against American positions in Bahrain and Kuwait. Trump called the ceasefire “over,” reinstated sanctions on Iranian oil exports the MOU had just suspended, and threatened to strike Iranian power and desalination infrastructure if the pattern repeats.

Is the dispute important enough for Washington to declare a ceasefire over and risk restarting a war that devastated Gulf capitals just months ago? The scale of the American response suggests the real issue was never the notification clause itself. What is being contested is who sets the terms for the strait and what those terms mean for the future of the Gulf - and, more broadly, for the global architecture of energy transport. Iran is not the only power with a stake in that outcome.

China, the world’s largest oil importer and Iran’s principal oil customer, has quietly worked to keep the strait open on terms it can live with, cutting its own crude imports by roughly a third at the height of the blockade to ease pressure on global markets and signalling opposition to Iranian transit tolls in direct talks between Presidents Trump and Xi. Beijing’s stake is not sentimental. It is the reason Washington cannot simply treat this as a bilateral argument with Tehran, and the reason any settlement over Hormuz will be judged well beyond the Gulf.

The Real Stakes: Who Owns the Order That Comes Next

For Iran, the strait is perhaps the most important instrument of power the war has left it. Ironically, the war started over Iran’s nuclear programme. That issue seems to be settled, at least for now. What remains unsettled is the future of the Strait and its impact on regional and global geopolitics.

Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas moves through Hormuz, and Iran’s demonstrated willingness to disrupt it - even at cost to itself - is the clearest evidence its adversaries have that Tehran can still make itself felt beyond its own borders. Iranian officials have also floated transit or service fees potentially worth tens of billions of dollars annually, a sum that could approach what the country once earned from oil exports before sanctions. Surrendering the coordination requirement would cost Iran both the deterrent and the revenue at once, at the precise moment it can least afford either loss. It is probably for this reason that Tehran has publicly warned that safe passage cannot be guaranteed for vessels bypassing its coordination and why the Revolutionary Guard has designated its own approved routes.

For Washington and the Gulf states, the calculation runs in the opposite direction. No regional government - not Oman, the UAE, nor Saudi Arabia - has ever recognized Iranian authority, and none intends to start now even after they failed to defeat Iran militarily. Conceding even an informal coordination requirement would validate the idea that Iran won the war and has more influence in the region than it had before the war. That is precisely the outcome the war and the MOU that followed it were meant to foreclose.

This is why the flashpoints have tended to involve acts that carry mostly symbolic weight, i.e., tanker rerouted along the Omani coastline, a new corridor announced by Oman and the International Maritime Organization without Iranian sign-off. What each side is actually testing is whether a ship can move through Hormuz without Iran’s blessing and survive the crossing. If it can, Iranian leverage is largely theoretical. If it cannot, American and Gulf claims to an “open” strait are theoretical instead.

That dual-notification arrangement - vessels reporting to both Tehran and a GCC maritime authority - was reportedly discussed after the first round of strikes but never finalized before talks were suspended for Khamenei’s funeral. Even implemented, it would only relocate the argument: Iran would treat inclusion in the chain as recognition of its authority; Washington would treat the GCC’s parallel role as proof Iran’s word alone carries no weight. Both readings could coexist for a while - which is exactly why the arrangement would not survive the next real test of the corridor.

What Comes After the Next Ceasefire

Every solution on the table assumes the problem is one of wording. It is not. And that is why every new version of the MOU is likely to fail. No document can resolve the central question left by the war: who actually prevailed? Washington and Tehran have reached very different conclusions.

For Washington, the answer is straightforward. Iran’s military was badly damaged, and its command structure was severely weakened. From this perspective, the campaign achieved its objectives. Tehran sees a different outcome. The government the war was meant to overthrow is still in power. It continues to shape events in its own region. For Iranian leaders, that is not a minor detail. It is the defining outcome of the conflict. Having survived the combined US-Israel campaign, they have little reason to treat control of the Strait of Hormuz as a bargaining chip to be surrendered.

That is what should concern anyone hoping the next ceasefire lasts longer than the previous two. A government that believes it has already endured the most severe military pressure the United States and Israel could impose has little incentive to give up the one asset it still fully controls. Authority over Hormuz serves two purposes. It deters future military action. It also provides leverage for a state whose economy has been battered by sanctions and war.

Thus, the more likely outcome is not a gradual Iranian retreat but a recurring cycle of confrontation. Iran will continue to assert its authority over the strait. Washington will respond with carefully calibrated military pressure, seeking to deter Tehran without triggering another full-scale war. Regional mediators, including Qatar and Pakistan, may once again step in to broker temporary pauses. But as the political costs of each confrontation fade, the cycle is likely to begin again.

The durability of future ceasefires will depend less on the wording of the next agreement than on these competing understandings of the war’s outcome. Tehran believes it has already survived Washington’s strongest blow. Washington, meanwhile, has struggled to prove otherwise without launching a much larger war that neither side appears willing to fight. Until one of those assumptions changes, the Strait of Hormuz will remain the arena where this dispute is played out. And the next ceasefire is likely to last no longer than the last two.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2026/07/13/why-iran-and-the-us-are-fighting-over-hormuz-again/