Iran said Wednesday it was in the final stage of drafting an agreement on the Strait of Hormuz with Oman, even as attacks in Yemen and Lebanon showed how quickly the region’s armed rulers can turn shipping lanes, border towns and villages into bargaining chips. Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said the deal was in the “final stage” of drafting and that a joint statement would be issued “if certain parties do not obstruct this process,” a neat little phrase apparently aimed at the U.S., which has spent the crisis policing access to the waterway while pretending to be a neutral traffic cop.
The Strait, the Blockade, the Bargain
The agreement is likely to depend on the U.S. lifting its blockade on Iran’s ports. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Thursday that any temporary routes through the Strait of Hormuz would not have impediments such as approvals, permissions, tolls or charges. Donald Trump, asked Thursday if a deal had been reached with Iran to reopen the vital waterway, said he didn’t want to say. “It has been sort of open right now,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. That’s the language of state power in a nutshell: the waterway stays “open” when the rulers say it does.
The strait remains crucial to global shipping and energy supplies. Before the war, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in February, about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil and natural gas passed through the waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Maritime data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence said at least two ships were hit in the Strait of Hormuz in the past week, while several others reported near misses or warnings from entities claiming to represent Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The company said Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels continued to claim attacks on ships in the Red Sea, though those claims could not be independently verified. Vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased to 84 transits during the week of July 27 to Aug. 2, up from 45 the previous week, but traffic was still far below the more than 700 transits seen in a typical week before the crisis.
Yemen’s War, Same Old Logic
In Yemen, more than 10 civilians, including a 4-year-old child, were injured in Saudi Arabia on Thursday after a series of attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, according to the Saudi military. The attacks took place in the southern region of Najran, near the Yemeni border, hours after the Iran-backed rebels claimed responsibility for another series of strikes in central and eastern Yemen that killed at least 30 government troops and wounded at least 50 others. The back-to-back attacks marked a major escalation since a truce in 2022 largely halted fighting. The civil war pits the Iran-backed Houthis against a Saudi-led coalition allied with Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Different flags, same monopoly on force. Different slogans, same civilians in the blast radius.
A Houthi leader said Saudi-backed troops were targeted in the attacks and that “hundreds” were either killed or injured. Yemeni officials said the assaults hit camps for forces of the internationally recognized government in the provinces of Marib and Hadramout. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Turki al-Malki, a spokesman for the Saudi military, said the later attack wounded seven Saudi nationals, one Yemeni, two Egyptians and one Pakistani expatriate. The Houthis did not release any statement. Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year. The result has been a long-running contest between armed authorities, each claiming legitimacy while ordinary people absorb the damage.
Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq: The Same Machinery
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another four were seriously wounded in an explosion in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said Thursday. The deaths were Israel’s first since a shaky truce was implemented in June between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The Israeli army launched strikes Wednesday in southern Lebanon in response to what it described as Hezbollah’s violation of the ceasefire and issued a call for residents of another village to flee, the first such warning Israel had issued in weeks. Lebanese and Israeli negotiators met in Rome to discuss implementation of the June deal under which Israeli forces are supposed to withdraw from areas they occupy in southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah’s disarmament. The arrangement reads like a familiar state bargain: withdrawal on paper, disarmament for one side, armed occupation and negotiated compliance for the other.
Ugandan authorities also won parliamentary approval Thursday to deploy troops as part of the International Stabilization Force for Gaza. The 20,000-strong force, proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace in February to ensure “future prosperity and enduring peace,” has not yet materialized. Several other countries pledged troops to the mission, including Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Albania and Indonesia, which has since put its commitment of troops on indefinite hold. The Gaza ceasefire has stalled, as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that Israel would not withdraw from its current lines in Gaza until Hamas had completely disarmed. Another peace architecture, another armed timetable, another promise that depends on who gets to keep the guns.
Iraq said Thursday that any armed activity outside state authority after Sept. 30 would be prosecuted under the country’s Anti-Terrorism Law, in a push to bring all weapons under government control. Several powerful, Iran-backed armed factions rejected calls to surrender weapons or dissolve their organizations, saying they remained committed to the “option of resistance.” Saudi Arabia and the U.S. launched strikes on Iraq last week after Riyadh accused Iraqi militias of using drones to attack its oil facilities. The retaliatory strikes in Iraq hit bases of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a collection of armed groups close to Iran that are officially part of Iraq’s security forces but often operate outside state control. That’s the regional order in miniature: governments, militias and foreign powers all claiming to restore order while using force to decide who gets to move, who gets to speak and who gets hit.