Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Flavio Macau, Associate Dean – School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University

The fallout from war between the United States, Israel and Iran has dominated global oil markets. And not just because the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about 20% of global oil and gas, remains effectively closed to shipping traffic.

Deep uncertainty about how long the disruption will continue has added a persistent “risk premium” – an extra cost built into oil prices to account for the risk of disrupted supply.

Rising insurance costs, reduced ship traffic and longer transit routes avoiding the Middle East have all added further friction to global oil supply chains.

An optimist might say this will all be sorted out quickly and soon enough we will be back to “normal”. And oil prices have retreated back below US$100 per barrel this week, on renewed hopes of a peace deal.

But they’re still elevated. Before war broke out in the Middle East, benchmark oil prices had hovered in the range of US$70–80 a barrel since 2023. That’s near where they’ve sat, on average, in “normal” times for much of the past two decades.

But what if there is no way back to “normal”? What if the fundamental challenge now isn’t the short-term disruption in supply, but the realisation that the days of cheap oil may have come to an end?

Oil’s invisible reach

Higher oil prices have a ripple effect that typically starts at the fuel pump. Petrol, diesel and jet fuel are top of mind. Driving to work, moving goods and travelling all become more expensive.

Many fertilisers, too, are petrochemical products. That means farming around the world is exposed to a shock.

But the list of goods that rely on oil and gas goes far beyond fuel and fertiliser. According to the US Department of Energy, petrochemicals (derived from oil and gas) are involved in the manufacturing of more than 6,000 everyday products.

In many cases, this is because petrochemicals are a key input in the production of plastic. But other products on the list may be surprising, such as aspirin, dishwashing liquid, toothpaste and dyes.

Building materials used in construction warrant a special mention. Asphalt, insulation, paint, pipes, membranes, fittings and other composite materials are mostly oil byproducts. Manufacturing bricks and many ceramic products is also gas-intensive.

Add transporting it all to the construction site, and the oil crisis becomes another headwind to housing affordability.

Is this the end of cheap oil?

In 1999, an article in The Economist quoted Don Huberts, who was then head of Shell Hydrogen at oil company Royal Dutch/Shell:

The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones, and the oil age will not end because we run out of oil.

True enough, but what about cheap oil? Can that come to an end?

The world has faced many oil shocks before, some for geopolitical reasons, others due to concerns demand would outstrip supply.

But almost every time analysts predicted the world was about to run out of oil, price hikes were met with new discoveries, technological improvements and oil substitution.

Companies such as Chevron have pioneered new techniques, such as deepwater drilling.

Extracting oil from shale through fracking unlocked new supplies, especially in the US. This helped the US become the world’s largest producer of crude oil in the late 2010s.

This time, however, production facilities across the Middle East have suffered major damage, which may take years to repair. The central question is no longer whether oil exists in the ground, but whether it can be supplied cheaply, reliably and at scale again.

Just in time vs just in case

Until 2020, global economies largely operated in “just-in-time” mode. You only take what you need, when you need it, assuming it will always be there for you. This system works efficiently – and is cheap – until something goes wrong.

Lessons from the pandemic brought back the idea of “just in case”, particularly as the war in Ukraine caused further disruption.

“Just in case” means that you keep more than you need, so if someone closes the tap, you can keep all else running. However, this creates new costs.

To keep more oil and gas than you need, you don’t just have to pay for the extra stock. Countries also have to build new storage and infrastructure, and pay more in insurance.

You refine your management to make sure it all works properly, so that the extra cost added is part of a larger contingency plan. But someone must foot this bill.

How the world will have to adapt

The end of cheap oil does not mean the end of oil use. It means higher costs embedded throughout daily life.

Pressure on governments to subsidise fuel, expand stockpiles and intervene in markets can mean larger budget deficits. Households will have less money left for non-essentials as the cost of living bites even harder.

We will adapt, as we are already beginning to see in the current crisis. There are signs people around the world are travelling less, using more public transport and electrifying cars and homes.

Industries may invest more in efficiency and green energy not out of environmental idealism, but cost necessity.

But there may still be a rocky road ahead, and we may never get back to “normal”. Adaptation does not end oil dependence; it reshapes it. The challenge is managing a world in which oil remains essential, but is no longer cheap, stable or politically neutral.

Flavio Macau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Will oil prices ever truly go back to ‘normal’? – https://theconversation.com/will-oil-prices-ever-truly-go-back-to-normal-280572

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Philip C. Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland

This week, Donald Trump posted an AI image of himself dressed in white robes, placing a glowing hand over an ill or deceased man in a hospital bed, as if to heal or resurrect him. The image, posted on Truth Social, was widely taken as him presenting himself as a Messianic Jesus figure.

Sometime the next morning, he deleted the post. “I thought it was me as a doctor,” he explained to reporters, according to Time magazine. Jesus? “Only the fake news could come up with that one.”

But the post was widely interpreted as blasphemous – including by conservative Catholic group CatholicVote.org.

“I don’t know if the President thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” declared Megan Basham, a prominent conservative Protestant Christian writer, on X. “But he needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God.”

“I was very grateful to see how many conservative Christians immediately denounced the blasphemous Jesus/Trump image,” said pastor Doug Wilson, who recently led a prayer service at the Pentagon and founded the network of churches War Secretary Pete Hegseth belongs to.

What is blasphemy?

Within the Christian tradition, blasphemy has historically been an unstable, shifting idea. But, simply put, it means speech, thought or action that shows contempt for – or mockery of – God and sacred matters.

Judaism and Christianity’s concept of blasphemy came from the injunction in the Old Testament not to revile God. Within the Old Testament, it was treated as a crime, punishable by death: “One who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; the whole congregation shall stone the blasphemer.”

The New Testament expanded the concept to include the rejection of Jesus. Eventually, cursing, reproaching, challenging, mocking, rejecting or denying Jesus became blasphemous.

More particularly, posing as Jesus or asserting powers that belong only to him was considered blasphemous in medieval times. The “Christs” that emerged were treated harshly, as dangerous heretics. This is where Trump’s presentation of himself as Jesus would undoubtedly be considered blasphemous.

Broadly, anything said or done that offended believers could be construed as blasphemous. Catholics at the time of the Reformation in the 16th century tended to brand those who offended them as heretics.

Protestants generally preferred the term blasphemy for anything they disliked or disagreed with. For example, 16th century theologian Martin Luther – a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation – condemned as blasphemous not only Catholics, but also Jews and Muslims.

Blasphemy as sin or crime

From the 17th century onwards, blasphemy became not so much an offence against God as one against society. Within the unstable societies of early modern Europe, blasphemy was viewed as socially and politically subversive and prosecuted as such. The Quaker James Naylor was imprisoned in 1656 for reenacting Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

Early in the 17th century, blasphemy crossed to the United States. Virginia’s first law code specified death for blaspheming the divine Trinity.

Despite the first amendment to the US constitution, protecting free speech, blasphemy laws were regularly enacted. The US Supreme Court didn’t rule that laws against blasphemy infringed the right to free speech until after World War II. Several states still have blasphemy on their books.

England’s Blasphemy Act of 1697, which criminalised the denial of the Holy Trinity, the truth of Christianity, or the divine authority of the Bible, carried over into the colonies of Australia and New Zealand.

Blasphemy is no longer an offence under Australian federal law, though laws governing it vary across the states: it’s still in the criminal code of many of them. New Zealand’s criminal code deals with “blasphemous libel” as part of “crimes against religion, morality and public welfare”.

Is there blasphemy in Islam?

Within Islam, there is no exact equivalent to “blasphemy”. But the idea of the “word of infidelity” is analogous to it. In practice, it amounts to mockery of God, the prophet, or the Islamic tradition generally.

So, when Trump mockingly declared “Praise be to Allah” in a recent post, he was guilty of blasphemy in Muslim eyes. Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza compared it to the Old Testament account of the prophet Elijah, who mocked the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18.

The Islamic advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations called it “disturbing” and “offensive to Muslims”.

Laws against blasphemy are actively enforced in many modern Islamic states.

Does blasphemy matter?

It is not blasphemous to speak or publish opinions that are hostile to Christianity, Judaism or Islam – or for that matter, any religion. What matters is not so much the substance of criticism as the manner in which it is made.

We should only worry when criticism becomes a form of “religious hate speech”. The question we should ask is about intent. In a secular society, where we do identify ill intent, we may wish to think about “blasphemy” as a matter of public morality, not theology.

So, what about Donald Trump’s post? Does it matter?

If we consider “blasphemy” to include the mocking of religion, there is little doubt that Trump’s mockery of Islam is blasphemous. If we believe his deleted Truth Social post was intended to suggest he is Jesus – or in some sense divine – then Christians are entitled to consider him blasphemous.

That said, from a secular perspective, it is more self-indulgent foolishness than hate speech – but nonetheless, extremely inappropriate for a US president.

Philip C. Almond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Was Trump’s so-called ‘Jesus’ image blasphemy? A religious expert explains – https://theconversation.com/was-trumps-so-called-jesus-image-blasphemy-a-religious-expert-explains-280603

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Mary-Anne Lea, Professor in Marine/Polar Predator Ecology, University of Tasmania

In 1902, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott spotted a large group of large black and white birds at Ross Island, Antarctica. This was among the many milestones of Scott’s famous Discovery expedition: the first breeding colony of emperor penguins.

Now, only 124 years since this penguin colony was discovered, emperor penguins have officially been listed as endangered, along with the Antarctic fur seal. As the world warms, Antarctic krill are shifting southwards and sea ice is shrinking at record levels. And these unprecedented changes are having a domino effect on these species.

These are the first penguin and pinniped – marine mammals that have front and rear flippers – to be given this conservation status in the Southern Ocean. Their perilous situation is a critical turning point, and shows how rapidly the Antarctic environment is changing.

At the same time, the spread of highly contagious avian influenza, or bird flu, adds a new and immediate threat to Southern Ocean wildlife, compounding the pressures of climate change on stressed species.

Dramatic declines linked to climate change

The first emperor penguin breeding colony was discovered at Cape Crozier, on Ross Island, during Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition in 1902. A decade later, Scott’s Terra Nova expedition returned, in part to collect emperor penguin eggs. It was an ill-fated expedition, immortalised in Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s famous book, The Worst Journey in the World.

In the 1960s, Scott’s son, Sir Peter Scott, one of the founders of modern conservation, helped establish the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List. Just 124 years after those early discoveries at Cape Crozier, that same framework has now been used to classify emperor penguins as endangered. The swift arc from discovery to extinction risk is a striking reminder of how quickly the species’ fortunes have changed.

Over nine years, between 2009 and 2018, emperor penguin numbers fell by 10%. Their numbers are expected to halve by 2073.

The decline is more pronounced for Antarctic fur seals. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the early 1880s, by 1999 their numbers had rebounded to an estimated 2.1 million mature seals. But since then, the global population has decreased by more than 50%, to about 944,000 mature individuals.

In just a decade, they have been reclassified on the IUCN’s Red List, going from of “least concern” – those species that are widespread and at low risk of extinction – to “endangered”. The IUCN’s red list is the comprehensive information source on the extinction risk status of species. This shows the remarkable speed at which these seals are declining.

Climate change and bird flu

Both of these dramatic declines are linked to climate change. Warming ocean temperatures and a reduction in sea ice affect the availability of the Antarctic fur seal’s key prey, Antarctic krill. Krill are shifting southwards and moving deeper, potentially making them less accessible to some predators. Competition with a growing population of whales has also increased.

Emperor penguins, by contrast, are completely dependent on sea ice. They use it as a stable platform for courtship, incubating their eggs and rearing chicks. But as sea ice declines and becomes less reliable, their breeding success is increasingly threatened. If the ice breaks up before chicks are fully developed, many are unable to survive.

At the same time, the spread of highly contagious bird flu adds a new and immediate threat to Southern Ocean wildlife. High mortality associated with avian influenza has also caused the uplisting of the southern elephant seal to “vulnerable” this week.

Some elephant seal populations have experienced more than 90% of pups dying, alongside sharp declines in breeding adults. These represent tens of thousands of animals lost, with many Antarctic fur seals also dying as a result of bird flu outbreaks.

We need to know more

Emperor penguins, Antarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals are three of the more widely researched Southern Ocean predators. But there is still a lot we don’t know, because of the remote location and the difficulty of sustaining research over time. And there are many species we know far less about. Antarctic ice seals, including Weddell seals, crabeater seals, leopard seals, and Ross seals, have “unknown” population trends on the IUCN red list, meaning there is not enough data to know if numbers are declining.

These recent listings make clear the urgent and ongoing need for improved, real-time monitoring. We need to know much more about wildlife health and population trends, the Antarctic environment and sea ice quality.

Human-driven threats facing Antarctic wildlife are many, and cumulative. To respond, we need to better protect Antarctic habitat and the species that live there. We need to reduce the interaction of marine species with industrial fishing. And we must improve how we assess current and suspected threats in Antarctica, when there is growing evidence of impacts.

Defining these animals as endangered is a stark reminder of how quickly Antarctica is changing before our eyes. Without a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and sustained conservation action, these species may be lost forever.

Mary-Anne Lea receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian government, Rolex, the National Geographic Society and others. She is affiliated with the University of Tasmania, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) Expert Group on Birds and Marine Mammals, the SCAR Standing Committee on the Antarctic Treaty System (as a delegate to CCAMLR) and is a co-founder and board director of Homeward Bound Projects.

Jane Younger receives funding from the Australian Research Council, National Geographic Society, Rolex, WIRES, the Marine Megafauna Research Fund, and Lindblad-National Geographic. She is affiliated with the University of Tasmania and Senior Editor of Ecology & Evolution.

Noemie Friscourt receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian government and the Antarctic Science Foundation. She is affiliated with the University of Tasmania.

– ref. The beloved emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal are now officially endangered. Here’s what can be done – https://theconversation.com/the-beloved-emperor-penguin-and-antarctic-fur-seal-are-now-officially-endangered-heres-what-can-be-done-280362

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Farah N. Jan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Pennsylvania

Twenty-one hours of direct negotiations. The highest-level face-to-face engagement between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

And yet, U.S. Vice President JD Vance boarded Air Force Two in Islamabad on the morning of April 12, 2026, with no deal to end the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran, including an understanding over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The U.S. has since begun what it says is a blockade of any and all ships originating in Iranian ports and would interdict every vessel that has paid a toll to Iran.

The collapse of the talks wasn’t the fault of bad faith or clumsy diplomacy. Rather, the talks failed because of structural obstacles that no amount of negotiating skill can overcome in a single weekend.

I and other exponents of international relations theory predicted this outcome. Understanding why matters enormously for what comes next.

The commitment barrier

The meeting in Islamabad wasn’t the first time representatives from the United States and Iran have sat around a table. In 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed to by Iran, the U.S. and five other nations showed that a formal agreement with nuclear inspections and verification is possible.

But that deal, which saw sanctions on Iran relaxed in return for limits over Tehran’s nuclear program, collapsed because the first Trump administration unilaterally walked away from the deal in 2018. In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency had consistently certified Tehran was holding up its end of the bargain.

Then came the June 2025 strikes by Israel and the U.S. on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Successive rounds of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran followed in early 2026. But despite an Omani mediator telling the world that a breakthrough was within reach, the U.S. bombed Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker who led Iran’s delegation in Islamabad, cited recent U.S. military action as a barrier to successful negotiations: “Due to the experiences of the previous two wars, we have no trust in the other side.”

Rather than an Iranian negotiating position, however, that was merely a description of a structural reality. Iran cannot be confident that any agreement it signs will be honored by this or subsequent American or Israeli administrations. And Washington isn’t sure Iran will not quietly rebuild what was destroyed once pressure lifts.

Moreover, while verification mechanisms on Iran’s nuclear program solve a technical problem, they do not solve the ongoing political one, in which both states are effectively still at war. Trust, once comprehensively destroyed, cannot be rebuilt in a hotel in Islamabad over 21 hours.

The scope of the problem

“The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that (Iran) will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said amid the Islamabad talks.

Iran’s enrichment knowledge is one of those tools. But the knowledge of how to enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity does not disappear when centrifuges are destroyed.

In this way, nuclear expertise is not like territory, equipment or sanctions relief. Centrifuges can be dismantled, and sanctions can be lifted in stages – both lend themselves to phased, verifiable agreements.

What the U.S. is demanding – a verifiable, permanent end to Iran’s breakout potential – requires Iran to surrender something that cannot be given back once conceded. Tehran and Washington both know this.

The problem is compounded by the extraordinary breadth of American demands on nonnuclear issues. Tehran’s demands included the release of frozen assets, guarantees around its nuclear program, the right to charge ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, an end to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and war reparations.

Washington’s 15-point proposal reportedly demanded a 20-year moratorium on enrichment, ballistic missile suspension, reopening of Hormuz, recognition of Israel’s right to exist and an end to Iran’s support for its regional proxy network, including Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas.

These are not two sides haggling over price. They are two sides who cannot even agree on what the negotiation is about.

Israel veto

Iran has also made ending Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon a condition of any comprehensive settlement, conditions which Washington and Jerusalem have both rejected.

The result is a structural deadlock that has nothing to do with Iranian or American negotiating skill. Moreover, even if the two parties in Islamabad found common ground on the nuclear question, Israel could always torpedo any deal through a continuation of its military action in Lebanon and Iran.

And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not need to be in Islamabad to shape what happened there. While Vance and Ghalibaf were negotiating, Netanyahu was on television, telling the world: “Israel under my leadership will continue to fight Iran’s terror regime and its proxies.” He made no mention of the talks at all – and has since come out strongly in support of the U.S. blockade.

What happens next?

Where does this leave the 14-day ceasefire, and what happens after that?

While the Trump administration immediately ramped up pressure on Tehran after the failure of talks, such escalation has thus far failed to bring about Iran’s capitulation in the current conflict.

Iran has declared the blockade an act of “piracy” and placed the country on “maximum combat alert,” with the country’s Revolutionary Guard warning that any military vessels approaching Hormuz would receive a “firm response.”

But like the nuclear negotiations, the blockade runs into the same wall. Iran controls the strait through mines, drones and geography. The U.S. can interdict ships but cannot reopen the strait without Iran’s cooperation – absent an unlikely military occupation.

As such, the blockade is largely a pressure tactic without a clear path for how it would resolve, which is exactly the problem that produced the Islamabad failure in the first place. The blockade also holds the risk of pulling in more countries. Trump’s interdiction order – “it’s going to be all or none” – in theory means the U.S. Navy would be prepared to interdict a Chinese tanker that has done business with Iran, risking a direct maritime confrontation with a nuclear power.

The alternative would be to let Chinese tankers through to avoid confrontation, but in so doing expose the blockade as a hollow strategy.

In either case, Beijing has become an active stakeholder in Iran’s leverage.

Same old problems … and a new one to boot

The structural obstacles that broke the Islamabad meetings will not dissolve before April 22, when the current ceasefire is due to expire.

The difficulty of convincing either side that any agreement will actually be honored will not be resolved by more talks, but is rather a product of what happened before the current negotiations. The nature of the nuclear question itself will not be negotiated away – it is a feature of physics and knowledge, not of political will. Moreover, Israel’s veto over any regional settlement will not disappear because Washington wants a deal.

Signs suggest that talks are still alive, and both Iran and the U.S. have shown a willingness to change previous red lines on the nuclear question even since the failure in Islamabad. Absent a larger shift in the status quo, however, the next round will face the same structural obstacles as before. But this time, there will be the added complication of a naval blockade that narrows, rather than expands, the diplomatic space.

Farah N. Jan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Islamabad talks were doomed to failure – and Hormuz blockade has thrown another obstacle to any Iran-US deal – https://theconversation.com/the-islamabad-talks-were-doomed-to-failure-and-hormuz-blockade-has-thrown-another-obstacle-to-any-iran-us-deal-280553

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Elizabeth Mendenhall, Associate Professor of Marine Affairs, University of Rhode Island

The Strait of Hormuz exists in the eye of the beholder.

While everyone agrees that, geographically speaking, it is a strait – a narrow sea passage connecting two places that ships want to go – its political and legal status is rather more complicated.

The United States and Iran both eye the strait – a choke point through which 20% of the world’s oil passes – very differently. Washington sees the Strait of Hormuz as exclusively an international waterway, whereas Tehran sees it as part of it territorial waters.

It follows that Iran’s toll-charging of ships is seen by the U.S. as illegal. Similarly, U.S. President Donald Trump’s blockade of the passage is a “grave violation” of sovereignty to Iran.

As an expert in the law of the sea, I know part of the problem is that the U.S. and Iran are living in two different worlds when it comes to the international laws governing the strait. Further complicating matters, both are in a different legal universe than most of the rest of the world.

The law of the sea

The “law of the sea” is a network of international laws, customs and agreements that set out the foundation for rights of access and control in the ocean. The framework sits apart from the laws of warfare, which are also relevant to the Persian Gulf situation.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, is a major plank of the law of the sea. Completed in 1982 and in force since 1994, it aims to create a stable set of zones and places – like international straits – where everyone agrees on who can do what. It has been ratified by 171 countries and the European Union, but not Iran or the United States. Iran has signed it but has yet to ratify; the U.S. has done neither.

This means that the rules which almost every country in the world has consented to can’t serve as a basis of agreement over how the U.S. and Iran should govern their actions in the strait during the current war.

The view from Iran

Both Iran and the U.S. agree that under the law of the sea, the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait, but not on what kind of international strait it is. Moreover, they disagree on the relevant laws that exist, and how they apply.

For Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait as set out under international law predating UNCLOS – notably the International Court of Justice’s ruling in the 1949 Corfu Channel case and the 1958 Territorial Seas Convention.

These older standards state that foreign ships have a right of “innocent passage” through international straits. Put in other terms, this means that if a ship is simply passing through, without doing anything else and without harming the security of the coastal countries, it must be allowed passage.

This gives Iran – and Oman, the strait’s other bordering country – power to make and enforce some rules over passage, such as rules for safety and the environment. They also have wide discretion to decide if passage is “non-innocent” and therefore not allowed. But it does not give them the right to impede innocent passage.

Contrary to the older standard, however, Tehran claims the right to “suspend” passage through its half of the strait, citing the waters as its territorial sea. This is a violation of the 1958 Territorial Seas Convention that Iran relies on for legal support, which says that when a territorial sea is also an international strait, innocent passage cannot be suspended.

The US interpretation

For the U.S., the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait requiring “transit passage,” as per UNCLOS. Although the United States is not a member of UNCLOS, it argues that the agreement’s updated concept of an “international strait” should apply.

Understanding a waterway as the newer type of “international strait,” which requires transit passage, shifts the balance against a coastal country’s control and toward free navigation.

Under this standard, countries bordering straits – like Iran and Oman in the case of Hormuz – must also allow overflight and submarines below the surface. Passage must be allowed so long as it is “continuous and expeditious.”

The U.S. has forcefully asserted this position at sea through regular “Freedom of Navigation” patrols through the Strait of Hormuz and other straits around the world. The patrols are a visible rejection of claims over the ocean that the U.S. deems illegal or excessive.

The basic U.S. argument is supported by some leading legal scholars, such as James Kraska, a professor of international maritime law at the U.S. Naval War College, who decries the Iranian position as “lawfare” and argues that Iran must abide by the compromises made in UNCLOS.

A ‘persistent objector’

But the U.S. is a global outlier here, and one of only a handful of countries – alongside the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea – which argue that “transit passage” is required by custom.

Custom, in this sense, is established if a practice at sea is seen as consistent and is backed by wide agreement over its legality. If something is seen as customary law, it applies to everyone. The only way to prevent a custom from applying to you is through the “persistent objection rule,” which gives a country an exemption to newly emerging standards if it has shown itself to be consistently against it.

Legal scholars are split on whether transit passage is customary law – although law of the sea specialists tend to say it is not.

Tehran argues that even if transit passage were customary international law, Iran is a “persistent objector,” and therefore, the rule doesn’t apply to them.

And it is true that Iran’s objection has been consistent. Both Iran and Oman argued in favor of innocent passage, and against transit passage, at the UNCLOS negotiations.

Iran reaffirmed its perspective upon signing UNCLOS in 1982. Tehran argues that because transit passage is tied up in the compromises made by UNCLOS, only countries that ratify the treaty can claim the right to transit passage – and neither the U.S. nor Iran has ratified it.

Navigating troubled waters

The complex military situation and economic disruption are only part of the story of the Strait of Hormuz.

What lies beneath is a complicated legal situation. Not only do the U.S. and Iran disagree about the legal status of the strait, but the countries that flag oil tankers – and which are therefore responsible for them – must also navigate their own commitments and perspectives under the law of the sea.

Every nation wants to avoid a legal precedent that is contrary to its long-term interests. But for international law to function – to reduce conflict and enable trade – what is needed is an agreement about what rules exist, and a shared commitment to abide by them.

Only that would achieve a stable post-war status for the Strait of Hormuz. How we get there, however, requires navigating some very tricky waters.

Elizabeth Mendenhall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Strait of Hormuz: Why the US and Iran are sailing in very different legal waters – https://theconversation.com/strait-of-hormuz-why-the-us-and-iran-are-sailing-in-very-different-legal-waters-280557

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jenna Norosky, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Aided by the Trump administration, debate over gender identity has gone from being a touchstone of domestic culture wars to infiltrating the work of international groups – including those designed to protect vulnerable communities.

In March 2026, at the 70th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, a U.S. delegate submitted a draft resolution to define gender in alignment with what the representative described as “its ordinary, generally accepted usage, as referring to men and women.”

While this may seem like a relatively benign or procedural intervention, the proposed resolution invited significant blowback from other delegates. Sweden’s representative framed it as an attempt “to turn back the clock 30 to 40 years.” The resolution ultimately failed after being blocked from going to a vote by Belgium, on behalf of the EU.

As an expert on gender, sexuality and conflict, I see the latest dispute over terminology at a key U.N. conference as reflecting a wider fight among the international community that has rumbled on for months. I believe that contest, moreover, threatens to undermine critical work to serve survivors of violence across the world.

Shifting approaches to gender

In recent years, some international organizations, nongovernmental organizations and countries have moved to understand gender beyond equating it with biological sex.

This had included expanding its meaning within the peace and security sector.

The U.N. Refugee Agency, for example, now follows an “age, gender and diversity” policy that defines gender as “socially constructed roles for women and men, which are often central to the way people define themselves and are defined by others.” In other words, trans women are women, and trans men are men.

The International Criminal Court takes a similar stance in its approach to gender-based crimes.

Both bodies contend that this gender lens is important for understanding the full scope of experiences and vulnerabilities not just of women and girls, but also LGBTQ+ individuals and men and boys during conflict.

While heavily contested by some nations, this approach departs from a previous implicit assumption that only women are targeted for sexual violence in conflict – and that these women are all cisgender.

Gender identity and violence

Despite the normalization of more inclusive approaches to gender, the pushback has recently gained a lot of traction, aided in part by the reversal of the U.S. from its previous stance under the Biden administration.

Only two months into the Trump administration, the U.S. pulled out of a working group of nations on LGBTQ+ concerns. Then, in January 2026, it withdrew from a slew of international bodies it claimed were “often dominated by progressive ideology and detached from national interests,” including U.N. Women. Most recently, the administration has called on FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, to change its policy on trans athletes.

It isn’t just the U.S. contesting inclusive language, however. In June 2025, the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, published a report suggesting that gender-neutral language and the recognition of gender identity in policy erases the category of what it refers to as “sex-based discrimination” against women and girls.

The draft resolution also argues that “gender identity theory” contributes to violence against women by advancing “stereotypes” and “sexist norms about how women should dress and behave.”

In effect, the report introduces a far narrower understanding of violence against women – and “gender” writ large – which notably excludes trans women.

Human rights professionals and NGOs, including Amnesty International and various feminist organizations, submitted a response to the draft version of the report claiming that its adoption of the term “sex-based violence … undermines decades of feminist advocacy, scientific evidence and legal advances.” Moreover, it “risks excluding vulnerable populations from essential protections.”

Nations were unsurprisingly split in their response, with some offering praise for the report’s approach and others raising concerns. Such was the feeling aroused by the special rapporteur’s position that in late 2025, Australia’s commissioner on sex inequality asked internally about potentially blocking Alsalem’s reappointment to her post.

Gender in conflict situations

Debates over language are familiar to those working in international crisis work, and some important tensions remain unaddressed. I argue, though, that a narrow interpretation of “gender” based on sex assigned at birth risks missing harms against certain groups.

Research on conflict and humanitarian contexts suggests that expansive conceptualizations of gender can better reveal dimensions of harms experienced by people who are not cisgender, heterosexual women or girls.

For example, my research with UMass Amherst’s Charli Carpenter demonstrates that a gender lens shows how Ukraine’s travel ban on “battle-aged” civilian men places these men, their families, trans women and nonbinary people misidentified as men at undue risk. In this case, it’s not biological sex but beliefs about gender – for example, the characterization of men as warriors and protectors – that create these vulnerabilities.

Similarly, understanding wartime violence against gender and sexual minorities as gender-based highlights how these groups can be singled out by state and armed groups for transgressing sanctioned gender norms.

However, there are also trade-offs to more expansive approaches to gender, as evidenced by my research on changing global approaches to wartime sexual violence against men and boys.

Some practitioners I spoke with expressed concern that the inclusion of violence against men and boys under the rubric of gender-based violence would detract from the disproportionate impact and structural roots of violence against women.

This is particularly troubling at moment of increasingly limited resources earmarked to serve conflict- and other crisis-affected women and girls, as well as rising backlash against women’s rights.

The anti-trans backlash

The resolution brought forward by the U.S., as well as the special rapporteur’s report, should, I believe, be understood in the context of a wider anti-trans backlash.

This backlash – which involves diverse groups, from religious conservatives to even some women’s rights advocates – mobilizes fears about public safety, marriage and the family structure.

Some of the backlash is predicated on harmful stereotypes about trans women that portray them as predatory opportunists.

While there is no evidence of this being a common trend, such narratives permeate the special rapporteur’s report. For example, the document includes claims that “males who identify as women retain a male pattern of criminality” and that lesbians get “coerced into sexual relations with males who identify as women.”

The report also constructs hypothetical scenarios about trans-inclusive spaces as a threat to cisgender women’s safety, such as the absence of “single-sex” washrooms in refugee camps “often leads to women avoiding using mixed-sex facilities.”

Navigating transphobic rhetoric

Significantly, this latter claim is embedded within partial truths. There is evidence that women’s vulnerability increases when refugee camps don’t have women’s washrooms, when they are placed too close to men’s washrooms or are in remote, unlit locations.

But there is no evidence in the draft report or elsewhere that the threat comes from trans women and not men.

In fact, research suggests that LGBTQ+ refugees and detained migrants experience unique and exacerbated vulnerabilities to sexual harassment, violence and exploitation.

Moreover, in conflict and humanitarian situations, violence against LGBTQ+ people shares some key root causes driving violence against women and girls, such as restrictive gender norms and militarism.

The agenda to prevent violence against women is, I would argue, increasingly co-opted by transphobia. Ultimately, this distracts from the struggles experienced by all those marginalized on the basis of gender.

Jenna Norosky received funding from the American Political Science Association to conduct research referenced in this article.

– ref. How debate about gender identity could undermine global efforts to protect victims of violence – https://theconversation.com/how-debate-about-gender-identity-could-undermine-global-efforts-to-protect-victims-of-violence-267177

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

Hungary’s most consequential election in decades has just delivered an important victory for democracy and accountability.

For Hungarians, opposition leader Péter Magyar’s emphatic defeat of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party ends 16 years of corruption and quasi-authoritarianism.

The outcome will also be felt widely, from Moscow to Washington and beyond.

In a contest characterised as a referendum on whether Hungary should pivot west or continue its authoritarian drift, Magyar’s victory is a stern rebuke to the dark, transnational forces of nativism, division and the politics of resentment that have become part of mainstream political discourse.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the election was not the turnout (more than 74%, shattering previous records), or even the result (a two-thirds supermajority for Magyar’s Tisza party, winning at least 138 of 199 parliamentary seats).

Both had been predicted for some time, and Orbán’s soft authoritarianism had always left the door ajar for a possible opposition victory at the polls.

Rather, the biggest surprise might have been Orbán’s immediate concession. He didn’t try to manufacture a crisis or use his security services to hold onto power. Given the strength of anti-government sentiment in Hungary, such a move could have led to a “colour revolution” – the type of massive street protests seen previously in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries.

This could have turned bloody. Liberal Hungarians, and the European Union more broadly, will be heaving a collective sigh of relief.

Why Orbán was suddenly vulnerable

Having won office, Magyar will need to move quickly but also carefully to bring change, so as not to alienate too many former Fidesz voters.

He has already asked President Tamaś Sulyok to resign, along with other Orbán loyalists. The Tisza supermajority in parliament is important here. It will be required for constitutional amendments to dismantle the architecture of Orbán’s authoritarian state.

Fortunately, this will be easier in Hungary than fully fledged autocratic systems. Indeed, Orbán’s longevity can somewhat be attributed to the fact that his brand of authoritarianism was only partial.

Certainly, it had the structural elements of an autocracy. That included widespread, government-controlled gerrymandering to ensure Fidesz victories, and the cynical diversion of state funds to cities and provinces controlled by Orbán’s political allies.

In addition, the nationalised media ecosystem was heavily supportive of the government, although alternative voices kept debate alive via foreign-owned news organisations.

But Orbán’s success also came from facing weak and easily fragmented or coopted oppositions. Magyar – a former Orbán ally – ran a disciplined campaign that nullified the electoral advantage for Fidesz.

Ultimately, though, when voters have a choice – even a constrained one – they will eventually reject governments that rely on blame and victimhood to mask their inability to offer people a better future.

Under Orbán, Hungary was consistently ranked the most corrupt nation in Europe. In 2025, it ranked last in the EU on relative household wealth. It had also suffered rampant inflation and economic stagnation after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Video footage of country estates built by Hungary’s elites, complete with zebras roaming the grounds, perfectly symbolised the popular outrage with wealth inequality.

A setback for Putin, Trump and right-wing populism

Hungary’s new start also sends a powerful message to other nations. Clearly the biggest loser from the election is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which had hastily tapped Kremlin powerbroker Sergey Kiriyenko and a team of “political technologists” to assist Orbán.

Under Orbán, Hungary was the strongest pro-Kremlin voice in the EU. It regularly stymied aid packages for Ukraine, tied up decision-making on the war in bureaucratic processes, and held the European Commission to ransom by threatening hold-out votes.

In fact, just days before the election, Bloomberg published a transcript of a phone call between Orbán and Putin from October 2025, in which Orbán compared himself to a mouse helping free the caged Russian lion.

This came on the back of revelations that Orbán’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, and other Hungarian officials had regularly been leaking confidential EU discussions to Moscow.

Another loser from the Hungarian election is the Trump White House.

The pre-election Budapest visit by US Vice President JD Vance to shore up support for Orbán was breathtakingly hypocritical. Vance farcically demanded an end to foreign election meddling, while engaging in precisely that. The White House then doubled down, with Trump promising on Truth Social to aid Orbán with the “full Economic Might of the United States”.

Now, though, Trump is very publicly on the losing side. And like the debacle of his Iran war, he tends to chafe at losing.

The election also shows that US foreign interference campaigns are not invulnerable, though the White House will doubtless continue excoriating Europe. The Trump administration’s view that Europe is heading for “civilisational erasure”, necessitating US efforts to “cultivate resistance” and “help Europe correct its current trajectory” is documented in its 2025 National Security Strategy.

But the broader movements representing what Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar calls the “Putinisation of global politics” have been repudiated by Hungary’s election result.

Under Orbán, Hungary was a hub for ultraconservative voices. Think tanks like the MAGA-boosting US Heritage Foundation and Hungary’s Danube Institute regularly held prominent dialogues bemoaning Europe’s capitulation to wokeism.

The Hungarian iteration of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), sponsored by the American Conservative Union, was a key calendar for Western right-wing politicians and commentators, including former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

China will also be keenly watching Magyar’s new government, especially since it has viewed Hungary as a soft entry point to the EU. The large-scale investment in electric vehicle manufacturing, especially battery production, are part of a growing Chinese business footprint in the country.

For Beijing, the question will be whether Magyar seeks to sacrifice this lucrative investment to burnish his European credentials.

What about the winners?

In addition to Hungarians outside Orbán’s orbit of elites, the EU will welcome the news that it remains an attractive force.

Ukraine, too, may find it easier to secure European assistance. At the very least, smaller Ukraine detractors like Slovakia will have to choose between acquiescing quietly or thrusting themselves uncomfortably into the open.

Yet, although Hungary’s result is promising, the world is still trending towards illiberalism.

And with the US midterm elections fast approaching, far-right American politicians, including Trump himself, will be studying Hungary’s lessons closely. If they conclude that Orbán’s brand of authoritarianism was too soft, a more hardline path looms as an ominous alternative.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute and various Australian government departments and agencies.

– ref. What Viktor Orbán’s election loss means for Putin, Trump and the rise of right-wing populism – https://theconversation.com/what-viktor-orbans-election-loss-means-for-putin-trump-and-the-rise-of-right-wing-populism-280447

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Robert Horvath, Senior lecturer, La Trobe University

The landslide victory of Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party in Hungary’s parliamentary election represents much more than a routine change of government. It marks the fall of an “electoral autocracy”, a regime that used elections to shroud and legitimise a system designed to keep the ruling Fidesz party and its leader, Viktor Orbán, in power indefinitely.

The Orbán regime was founded on three pillars. The first was the concentration of power in Orbán’s hands and the destruction of constitutional restraints and oversight mechanisms.

Propelled to power in 2010 by a wave of revulsion at corruption scandals and economic crisis, Orbán quickly took over key state institutions like the judiciary, the taxation office, the prosecutor’s office and the election commission. Each were stacked with Fidesz loyalists, who transformed them into instruments of the regime.

The second pillar was corruption. The Orbán regime enriched Hungary’s elite by transferring vast resources to a group of loyal oligarchs and Orbán cronies.

It achieved this through skewered tendering processes to award massive state contracts to people like Lőrinc Mészáros, a former gas-fitter who had been one of Orbán’s close childhood friends. In 2010, Mészáros was a minor local businessman, but his wealth doubled every year of Orbán’s rule. By 2018, he was the richest man in Hungary.

The third pillar was the media, slowly subjugated by a pincer movement of government institutions and loyal oligarchs.

Legislation passed in 2011 created a Fidesz-controlled Media Council, which was empowered to impose fines for “unbalanced” reporting. This had a chilling effect on journalists.

At the same time, the regime distributed lavish subsidies and advertising contracts to pro-regime outlets. And loyal oligarchs acquired the last bastions of the Hungarian mainstream media. In 2016, one of Hungary’s most influential newspapers, Népszabadság, was purchased by a company linked to Mészáros and promptly shut down.

The culmination of this war of attrition was the creation of a massive media conglomerate, the Central European Press and Media Foundation. It came to control hundreds of media holdings donated by pro-regime businesses. The result was the consolidation of the regime’s control over an estimated 80% of Hungary’s media market.

Orbán justified this concentration of power by posing as a defender of Hungary’s sovereignty and traditional values against threats to the nation.

His rule was punctuated by a series of scare campaigns constructed around external threats – the philanthropist George Soros, the European Union, refugees and Ukraine. He used these threats to justify increasingly draconian controls over civil society and the domestic opposition.

Who is Péter Magyar?

What enabled opposition leader Péter Magyar to topple this system in Sunday’s election was the fact he was an insider.

As a moderate conservative and former Fidesz functionary, Magyar was not easy to stigmatise using the regime’s usual stereotypes. At the same time, he had deep knowledge of the inner workings of the system.

In early 2024, he broke with Fidesz during a massive scandal over a presidential pardon for a man convicted of covering up paedophilia in a children’s home. And he became an anti-corruption crusader.

On his Facebook page, Magyar reflected he had always believed in Fidesz’s vision of a “national, sovereign, civic Hungary”, but had slowly come to realise:

[…]this is really just a political product, a sugar coating that serves only two purposes: to conceal the operation of the power factory and to amass immense wealth.

A few weeks later, he magnified the impact of this bombshell by releasing audio recordings of a conversation in which his ex-wife, former Justice Minister Judit Varga, discussed how Orbán’s Cabinet chief had organised the removal of files in a corruption case.

Before the Orbán regime had time to react, Magyar had emerged as the leader of an obscure centre-right party, Tisza, in the elections to the European parliament. In a blow to Fidesz, it came from nowhere to win 30% of the vote. The result transformed Magyar into the undisputed leader of Hungary’s democratic movement.

Taking down an autocrat

Magyar undermined the Orbán regime in two ways.

The first was to neutralise Orbán’s populist, anti-elitist politics by focusing on corruption. Magyar repeatedly drew attention to the luxurious estate at Hatvanpuszta, a 19th century country estate and model farm that was massively redeveloped after 2018.

Although formally owned by Orbán’s father, Győző, it was widely believed to be a personal retreat of Viktor Orbán himself. Magyar called Hatvanpuszta “the heart of the system”, and likened it to one of Putin’s palaces.

The second was to reach out to Orbán’s rural heartland. In 2025, Magyar walked hundreds of kilometres in a series of political marches across the Hungarian countryside, visiting the small towns and villages that traditionally voted for Fidesz.

His party, Tisza, soon overtook Fidesz in the pre-election polls, but a peaceful transition of power was far from inevitable.

During its final years, the Orbán regime had became increasingly repressive. It used the security services to conduct a covert operation to penetrate the Tisza party’s computer servers. It also laid espionage charges against the country’s famous investigative journalist, Szabolcs Panyi, for exposing how Orbán’s foreign minister was collaborating with the Kremlin.

And a disinformation campaign, apparently of Russian origin, prepared the ground for a government crackdown by raising the spectre of post-election violence and attempts to assassinate Orbán.

But what broke the regime was the tidal wave of popular support for Magyar’s campaign. In the lead-up to the election, fractures began to emerge within the regime. A combination of whistleblower testimony and leaks from the security forces shone a spotlight on its abuses of power.

When the scale of Magyar’s victory became clear on election night, there was no room to dispute the verdict of the people. Orbán was finished.

Robert Horvath has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. He exposed corruption and walked across Hungary. Now Péter Magyar has defeated a powerful state machine – https://theconversation.com/he-exposed-corruption-and-walked-across-hungary-now-peter-magyar-has-defeated-a-powerful-state-machine-280455

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ioana Emy Matesan, Associate Professor of Government, Wesleyan University

President Donald Trump’s rapid and dramatic turn from threatening to kill “an entire civilization” in Iran on the morning of April 7, 2026, to announcing a two-week ceasefire later that day left many observers with a sense of whiplash.

While it is difficult to predict whether the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran will hold or how events will unfold, the dynamics of the conflict so far reveal multiple vulnerabilities in the short term and numerous detrimental effects on the region in the medium to long term.

Already, the truce has shown signs of strain. Iran and the U.S. almost immediately offered dueling narratives about the agreement, including whether it would cover the war in Lebanon. Iran and Pakistan, the primary mediator, asserted that it would, while the U.S. and Israel, which pledged to honor the U.S. agreement, said it would not. Indeed, a day after the ceasefire came into force, Israel conducted some of its most intense bombing in Lebanon to date.

As an expert in Middle East politics, I believe that the involvement of so many governments and militant groups – in both the negotiation process and in terms of the regional effects of the conflict – make it more difficult to uphold a ceasefire.

Over the past decade, there has been a shift in regional alliances in the Middle East, leading to increasingly assertive foreign policies by many countries and a deepening rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The current war only fuels these dynamics, incentivizing competition and offering governments and militant groups new opportunities to exert leverage over opponents.

The current reality also underlines the idea that external intervention and privileging war over diplomacy has made conflict resolution ever more difficult in a region with a long history of imperial expansion, great power competition and bitter political divides.

Regional fault lines

One of the more remarkable aspects of the war in Iran that began on Feb. 28 was how quickly it escalated in terms of geographic scope and the actors pulled into it.

The three key countries involved – Israel, the U.S and Iran – are all facing internal political tensions, polarization and legitimacy crises.

Outside countries such as China, Russia and Pakistan have deployed their own strategic interests and diplomatic tools in the conflict in indirectly getting involved.

The conflict has also drawn in a variety of regional governments and other groups, from [Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states] to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

All of that is bound to deepen the fault lines that make regional tensions and sectarian conflict more likely in the long run.

Meanwhile, public opinion in the Arab world shows profound damage to the United States’ reputation in the region and a loss of credibility in the international legal and humanitarian system.

I think these developments are also deeply troubling for the long term.

Events since the war began have been bad enough. The war has led to over 1,200 Iranian civilian deaths, over 3.2 million Iranians temporarily displaced and significant damage to Iranian infrastructure. Thirteen American soldiers have also died in the course of the conflict, as have more than two dozen in Israel and the Gulf states.

That’s to say nothing of the toll in Lebanon, where more than 1,500 people have died and more than 1 million displaced since the beginning of March.

The Houthis and the politics of regional instability

The Houthis in Yemen, one of the conflict participants that remained surprisingly silent at the outbreak of the war, are instructive for understanding the region’s complicated and fractured dynamics.

As a religious rebel movement that follows the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam, the Houthis, who took over Yemen’s capital in 2014, have been the target of sustained military operations by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since 2015. This has only pushed them closer to Tehran.

Avowed opponents of Israel, the Houthis declared war against the country following the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.

In 2024, the Houthis attacked maritime shipping in the Red Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key maritime choke point. That prefigured, in a much smaller and less consequential way, Iran’s own actions in blocking the Strait of Hormuz during the current crisis.

That Houthi campaign to block maritime shipping resulted in a U.S.-led international coalition and significant military strikes against the insurgent group, their redesignation as a foreign terrorist organization, and ultimately a ceasefire deal between the U.S. and the Houthi movement in May 2025.

Yet the underlying regional disputes and domestic fractures that the Houthis were part of were never resolved.

Eventually, the Houthis reentered the fight against Israel amid the latest war in Iran, attacking Israel on March 28.

They refrained from attacks in the Red Sea and currently are observing the ceasefire. But entering the war enabled a weakened Houthi movement to signal resolve, military capacity and commitment to its alliance with Iran, just as Yemen continues to face an economic and severe humanitarian crisis. The Houthis now also have added leverage to play the role of spoiler amid ongoing diplomacy.

The costs of diplomacy avoidance

Of course, the Houthis are not the only movement that will perceive the war on Iran as an opportunity to exert regional influence.

Just as the Houthis and their enemies are using regional conflicts to boost their domestic legitimacy and strategic advantages, so too are the more salient participants − Iran, Israel and the U.S. − relitigating their own past conflicts on the battlefield.

Amid all of these current regional trends of crises and contestation, the United States’ own strategic goals have remained remarkably unclear. The Trump administration has vacillated from a focus on regime change to preventing Iran from developing nuclear capabilities.

So far, there are no indications that talks with Iran to extend the ceasefire into a full diplomatic agreement will successfully prevent Iran from pursuing uranium enrichment. Indeed, one of the contested points of the framework for talks with Iran is the apparent acceptance of Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment.

In 2018, Trump abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or so-called Iran deal. In it, Iran agreed to terms, including limiting uranium enrichment, that would block its path to a nuclear weapon, should it have desired one.

Under the Iran deal, Tehran had also complied with inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It was not until much after American withdrawal from the agreement that Iran once again started stockpiling uranium and pursuing enrichment.

In her 2020 book on the tenuous 22-month diplomatic process leading to the Iran deal, aptly titled “Not for the Faint of Heart,” Ambassador Wendy Sherman wrote how complex, challenging and delicate such multiparty negotiations can be.

But the recent war on Iran suggests that the current machine-gun politics approach toward Tehran and the Middle East favored by the U.S. and Israel comes with serious costs and risks.

In the course of a war with unclear targets, vague strategic objectives and high human costs, the region is far less stable than it was when the conflict began. That has made the path to long-term durable peace all the more difficult now that diplomacy is back on the table.

Ioana Emy Matesan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. After ceasefire, negotiating a lasting deal with Iran would require overcoming regional rivalries and strategic incoherence – https://theconversation.com/after-ceasefire-negotiating-a-lasting-deal-with-iran-would-require-overcoming-regional-rivalries-and-strategic-incoherence-280243

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jennifer Parker, Adjunct Professor, Defence and Security Institute, The University of Western Australia; UNSW Sydney

Wednesday’s ceasefire announcement by President Donald Trump, linked to Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, prompted immediate optimism shipping would quickly resume. It didn’t.

The following morning, traffic remained minimal. A handful of vessels, largely linked to Iran, made the transit. But most of the ships waiting in the Gulf stayed put. Iran announced shortly afterwards that it would effectively close the strait because of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.

The reality is the strait was never closed. Framing the issue as “open” or “closed” misses the point.

Ships are not being physically blocked. They are being deterred.

Over recent weeks, Iran has demonstrated both the capability and intent to target commercial shipping. Attacks and credible threats against vessels have driven daily transits down from around 130 to just a handful. Until that risk changes, ships will not return in meaningful numbers.

So what can be done to turn this around?

Both walking and talking

The ceasefire declarations have added to the uncertainty rather than resolved it.

Washington has asserted that the strait is open.

Tehran’s messaging has been more ambiguous, including references to requiring vessels to inform Iranian authorities before transiting.

Some interpret this as a precursor to attempts to exert control over the waterway through a toll.

This ambiguity matters. Shipping is a commercial activity driven by risk calculations. Operators and crews will not move on the basis of political statements, particularly when recent experience suggests those statements may not hold.

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Read more:
Will the conflict in Lebanon destroy the US-Iran ceasefire? Maybe, but it was already shaky

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The importance of reassurance

In practice, restoring traffic through the strait will likely occur in two phases.

The first is reducing the threat. That can occur through military means, diplomacy, or a combination of both, but it must materially degrade Iran’s ability and willingness to target shipping.

The second is reassurance.

Even if Iran’s attacks on civilian shipping stop as a result of the ceasefire, shipping will not immediately return. Confidence has been shaken and will take time to rebuild.

A credible reassurance effort would include limited naval escorts, at least initially. It’s notable the US did not move immediately to demonstrate confidence in the ceasefire by escorting US flagged and crewed commercial vessels out of the Gulf.

That would have sent a clear signal to industry, helped restore confidence in transits and undercut subsequent Iranian claims that ships require approval from its armed forces.

Given Iran’s interest in maintaining the ceasefire, it would have been unlikely to challenge ships under US naval protection. The US hesitation has instead created space for Iran to entrench its position, pushing vessels closer to its coastline and reinforcing its ability to shape how the strait is used.

An effective reassurance campaign would also involve a broader international presence to provide surveillance, information-sharing and rapid response capability. The international community should move quickly to establish this. Its very establishment would help restore confidence in transits.

We have seen this model before. The International Maritime Security Construct, established in 2019 following Iranian attacks in the Gulf of Oman, focused on transparency, coordination and reassurance rather than large-scale convoy operations.

I served as the construct’s Director of Plans in 2020. A similar, but more effective, approach is likely to be required again. It is not a silver bullet, but reassurance is layered, and this would at least provide the clarity and communication shippers need.

Diplomacy will also matter. Clear, coordinated messaging from the international community, backed by explicit economic consequences for any renewed attacks on merchant shipping, will be essential to rebuilding confidence.

The question of tolls

There has also been speculation about whether Iran might seek to impose a toll on vessels transiting the strait.

The legal position here is clear. The Strait of Hormuz is an international strait under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Ships enjoy the right of transit passage through the strait. Charging vessels for passage would cut directly against that principle and set a dangerous precedent for other strategic waterways.

There are early signs Iran is testing the boundaries. Reports of radio calls warning vessels they require approval to transit, and suggestions that ships should notify Iranian authorities before transiting, point to an attempt to exert greater control over the strait.

That should be resisted.

Allowing a toll, or even limited restrictions, to take hold in the Strait of Hormuz would have far-reaching consequences, undermining the central principle of maritime trade: freedom of navigation. Regardless of Donald Trump’s flippant comments, the international community is unlikely to accept any enduring Iranian toll system.

If Iran attempts to pursue one, it should face clear economic consequences, including sanctions.

Questions remain about whether mines have been laid in or near the strait. Even the suggestion adds to uncertainty and reinforces the need for a coordinated international response, including transparent assessments of the threat environment.

A clear, public assessment from the international community on whether the strait has in fact been mined would go a long way. It should be an early priority for any coalition effort.

The bottom line

Ultimately, shipping will return to the Strait of Hormuz not when it is declared open, but when it is assessed to be safe enough.

That will require a sustained period without attacks, a visible international effort to secure the waterway, and clear signalling that the rules governing international straits will be upheld.

Until then, the ships will wait.

Jennifer Parker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What will it take to get ships going through the Strait of Hormuz again? – https://theconversation.com/what-will-it-take-to-get-ships-going-through-the-strait-of-hormuz-again-280275