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The deal’s implementation now has four working groups, Sanctions Termination, Nuclear Affairs, Reconstruction, and Monitoring, plus two coordination mechanisms for Lebanon and Hormuz demining. Reading the architecture reveals the gap: there is no working group for strait governance. The waterway the crisis was about got a demining mechanism and nothing else. The basket post asked to decouple the strait; instead it was dropped. This post argues for the fifth working group, the one the strait actually needs.

The UK’s mine countermeasures force arrived this week, RFA Lyme Bay and 270+ personnel, to clear dozens of mines still in Hormuz’s former shipping lanes. But the industry wants more than clearing: it wants routes ‘independently verified as safe.’ Clearing is engineering; certifying is governance, and it is the harder of the two. A temporary coalition can verify a sweep today; only a standing authority can keep the strait certified clear tomorrow and every day after. This post reads the clearing-versus-certifying gap.