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Five days ago this site warned that bundling strait governance with the nuclear file made it hostage to the most failure-prone negotiation in the region. This week the nuclear talks began stalling in public: Grossi says inspections were agreed and ‘explicitly’ mandated; Iran’s deputy FM says no, they await a final agreement after sanctions end, and no one even met Grossi in Switzerland. The basket problem is materializing on schedule. This post reads it, and renews the case to decouple the strait before the sixty days run out.

The deal now runs on two 60-day clocks. The first is the strait’s no-toll window. The second started this week: Treasury issued a temporary 60-day general license authorizing Iranian oil sales, freeing ~67M stranded barrels. It is the buyer-leg counterpart to the no-toll window, and it has the same shape: relieve the emergency now, defer the institution. A general license is a revocable waiver carved out of a standing prohibition, not the permanent settlement durable commerce requires. This post reads the second clock.