How Do You Know the Strait Is Open? The Deal Has No Verifier
The deal declares the strait reopened, but contains no compliance verification mechanism, no way for any party to confirm the reopening is genuine and sustained. Iran can say it is open; the US can say it is open; neither claim is independently checkable. The Monitoring working group watches the parties’ compliance, not the water. The excluded Gulf states cannot confirm what they most need to know, so they hedge. This post reads the verification vacuum, and why the verifier is the institution.