Comment by Majromax
4 hours ago
> It’s territorial waters belonging to Iran and Oman.
The trick is that it's still an 'international strait', or a segment of water that forms the only connection between two areas of high seas -- in this case the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The principle of freedom of navigation establishes that innocent traffic (civilian traffic, and even warships in peacetime) have a right to use the strait to go from one body of international water to the other.
Iran may claim that it doesn't have to abide by that right, but international law is never self-executing. One question to be resolved by this war is whether Iran will ultimately recognize the right to navigation in any settlement (and then choose to abide by said settlement).
As the nation that was attacked first, They have an unimpeachable argument for wanting to defend the rest of their territorial waters. The ludicrously escalatory rhetoric from the US President has turned this into an existential conflict. I can't take finger-wagging against Iran seriously to be honest, the idea that western powers would scrupulously adhere to international mores if subjected to a full-on kinetic attack by another nation state is absurd on its face.
One can argue that they have a "good reason" for ignoring international rules, but I would voice a risk here. Other nations that control important straits are watching what is happening and many of them could benefit more by taxing their straits than allowing free passage, and as more do it, the benefit only increase. It is a kind of prisoner dilemma in that defecting becomes the best strategy as soon anyone else start defecting.
As with other recent trade wars, the value of this kind of behavior goes down when other nations start to retaliate. A ship might be able to pay the insurance from Iran, but can they afford to pay the same fee for each time they pass some other nations territorial waters? At some point the US blockade won't matter and the profitability of the venture will be zero.
> They have an unimpeachable argument for wanting to defend the rest of their territorial waters
They are shooting down neutral tankers outside of their territorial water, so stop with the bullshit. If they only shot ships in their own waters traffic in Hormuz would already have returned to normal.
> the idea that western powers would scrupulously adhere to international mores if subjected to a full-on kinetic attack by another nation state is absurd on its face.
We know they are, we have Ukraine as an example they don't start attacking neutral nations civilian vessels just because Russia attacked them. Only evil regimes do that, you don't "defend yourself" by committing terrorism against innocent neutral country ships that aren't shipping anything related to the country you are fighting.
There is no reason at all for Iran to start shooting ad Indian ships just because USA attacked Iran, no western nation would defend themselves that way, many western nations has been attacked and conquered in history so we know how they act.
International Law now has no value when the America-Israel alliance has been skirting said laws to commit mass atrocities in recent history.
> The principle of freedom of navigation establishes that innocent traffic
"freedom of navigation" seems to be from UNCLUS no? So why should a country (Iran) that didn't ratify UNCLUS care about the terms it binds it's signatories to?
International law isn’t worth the time someone spent to write the words. It means approximately nothing. OPEC is a cartel, for example.