Kazem GharibabadiPosts by

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 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.