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On 23 May 2026, Trump said an Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was ‘largely negotiated.’ The contemplated MOU lifts the blockade and opens a 60-day nuclear window — but its ‘unrestricted navigation’ language can be read two ways: UNCLOS free transit, or merely the end of the US blockade with the PGSA arrangement intact. Iran’s Fars response insists the strait ‘remains under Iranian management.’ This post reads the gap that the language points conceal.

The Strait of Hormuz has two shores. The southern bank is Oman’s Musandam Peninsula, and at 21 nautical miles wide with two 12-mile territorial seas, there is no neutral corridor — every transit passes through Iranian or Omani waters. Oman’s UNCLOS free-transit position is the single most important lever for converting the unilateral Iranian arrangement into an equal-access institutional one. This post reads the other shore and the Malacca-style cooperative model it points toward.

The 12-article statute behind the PGSA, ratified by Iran’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee on 21 April, formalises the legal architecture: rial-denominated fees, Israeli vessels banned, hostile-flag SNSC approval, 20 per cent cargo confiscation for non-compliance. This post reads each substantive provision against the equivalent at the Suez Canal Authority and the Panama Canal Authority, and shows where the legal-architecture choice produces a sovereignty-asserting state-security instrument rather than a chokepoint authority.

Six India-flagged vessels transited inbound on 18 May 2026 in a coordinated cluster under bilateral Iran-India arrangements. The chokepoint is now operationally bifurcated: a compliant fleet under PGSA-administered transit and a holding queue of about 2,000 vessels waiting for the institutional configuration the operator class can use. This post reads the bifurcation, the historical parallel of the 2018-2025 shadow fleet, and what a treaty-backed authority would do to consolidate it.

On 18 May 2026, Iran formally announced the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, the institutional body administering its toll-booth corridor through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has built a chokepoint authority. It is not, on its present design, the configuration the operator class, the United States, China, the GCC, or the site has been arguing for. This post reads the PGSA in detail and identifies the six features that separate it from a treaty-backed authority on the Suez or Panama model.

Trump and Xi met in Beijing on 14-15 May, the first US state visit to China since 2017. The joint position supports reopening the strait and rejects ‘a charge for transiting through it.’ This post reads what the phrase means against UNCLOS Article 26 and the Suez/Panama services-fee precedent, separates the rejection of the Iranian sovereignty-asserting toll from the question of how a working authority recovers its institutional cost, and identifies where the summit narrows the negotiating space.

Project Freedom paused 5 May on ‘great progress’ toward a deal. By 11 May, Trump called Iran’s response ‘a piece of garbage’ and the ceasefire ‘on massive life support.’ By 15 May, a ship had been seized and another sunk. The ten days are a natural experiment in whether operational measures can substitute for institutional ones. This post reads the answer the experiment produced.

The 28 April Jeddah communique called for a ‘permanent, long-term arrangement’ for the Strait of Hormuz. The 5 May US-Bahrain UN draft resolution, with the support of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar, asserted freedom of navigation in accordance with international law as the operating principle. The GCC has, in ten days, moved from regional consultation to formal multilateral institutional positioning. This post reads where the alignment sits and what it implies for the configuration that would close the gap.

On 2 May 2026, China’s Ministry of Commerce issued the first formal prohibition order under the 2021 Blocking Rules, barring compliance inside China with US sanctions on five Chinese refineries buying Iranian crude. The order hardens the buyer leg of the four-leg toll architecture against further OFAC erosion. This post reads what changes, what doesn’t, and why a treaty-backed transit authority can coexist with the bifurcated buyer-side legal environment by design.

The United States 15-point proposal asks for the chokepoint as a status (reopening). The Iranian 14-point response asks for it as a structure (new mechanism). The two are mirror-image and the gap between them has, in principle, one institutional answer the existing chokepoint authorities at Suez and Panama have been operating for decades. This post reads the geometry of the gap and what fills it.