Majed Al Ansari, adviser to the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman, said the Strait of Hormuz will remain a vital international trade artery even as efforts by Gulf states to develop alternative routes for energy and other exports expand.
Speaking to The National in an interview on the sidelines of the Hili Forum in Abu Dhabi, Mr Al Ansari, who is also spokesman for Qatar's Foreign Ministry, said: “The Strait of Hormuz has been a crossroad for international trade for millennia. No one action or situation will change that.”
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that Gulf states were fast-tracking alternative routes that would allow them to bypass the strait, which has been severely disrupted during the war between the US and Iran. He said oil could increasingly be transported through pipelines across land, reducing the waterway’s importance.
“The oil will be going on pipelines across the land. In two years, the Strait of Hormuz will be a worthless piece of water,” Mr Bessent said.
Mr Al Ansari said the Gulf’s importance to the global economy extended well beyond oil, highlighting the region’s production of petrochemicals, fertiliser and other commodities as an example.
“You talk about direct energy like oil but also talk about urea. We are already seeing decreased crops around the world as a result of the lack of urea,” he said. “Talk about helium that goes into medical industries, that goes into technology that affects everyday life everywhere.
“How is that dependency going to change? It is impossible to envision a world where the international economy does not see the Strait of Hormuz as a valuable waterway that brings in a lot of the needed materials around the world.”
Iran followed through on its threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, once a conduit for a fifth of global energy supplies. The disruption sent energy prices soaring and sparked a global economic crisis.
The waterway's status remains a central obstacle in negotiations between Washington and Tehran, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan. Tehran claims the strait belongs to Iran and Oman – a position Gulf states broadly reject.
Rebuilding trust
Qatar agrees that rebuilding trust with Iran will be difficult after its attacks on Gulf states, but Mr Al Ansari said the region could not afford to treat the breach as permanent. He believes Gulf countries would continue to live alongside Iran and must eventually find a way to restore ties, while making clear that responsibility for repairing the relationship rests largely with Tehran.
“We cannot afford to take a passive role in this. We cannot afford to deal with trust as an eternal issue,” he argued. “We will live next to more than 90 million people of Iran for millennia, as we have [already] lived next to them for millennia.”
When the war started at the end of February with US and Israeli air attacks against Iran, Tehran retaliated by striking US Gulf allies and effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz. While Iran claimed it was targeting US interests in the region, it mainly hit important energy and civilian infrastructure in all six Gulf states.
“As we have found peace and harmony with all of the nationalities living in our countries, we will for sure find a way of living next to Iran,” said Mr Al Ansari. “Most of the responsibility for that lies on the Iranian side – in exercising good neighbourly relations and realising that they are living next to neighbours, not enemies, and that using military pressure or any other means of pressure will not deliver the results they seek for the people they should be working for.
“Our goal is to extend our hands when the time is right, and at the same time to keep the deterrence and show very clearly, as we have shown during this crisis, that we are able to defend ourselves.”
No easy exit
Qatar remains in contact with both sides but has not seen the conflict reach a point where an end is in sight, Majed Al Ansari said, warning that the war was imposing mounting economic and security costs on the region and the wider world.
“We have to be realistic. We haven't yet reached the end line of this conflict. We are working with the parties to identify how we can get there,” he added. “But the world cannot afford for this conflict to continue. The world cannot afford for the Strait of Hormuz to remain closed. Our region cannot afford for missiles to go back and forth across the Gulf.”
Qatar played a key role alongside Pakistan in brokering the 14-point memorandum of understanding in mid-June, reached after weeks of fighting. The agreement was intended to halt hostilities and give the two sides 60 days to negotiate a longer-term settlement, including over Iran’s nuclear programme and the Strait of Hormuz.
But the temporary agreement subsequently frayed over disagreements about its implementation, including the management and reopening of the strait. This was followed by a flurry of tit-for-tat military strikes.
The escalation has been compounded by a US campaign of financial pressure on Tehran, with Washington imposing new sanctions on Iranian-linked banks and other entities, and threatening secondary sanctions against companies and countries that continue doing business with Iran.
Mr Al Ansari questioned whether financial pressure would achieve its intended result, saying Qatar’s position was that dialogue was the only way out of regional crises.
“We have seen economic sanctions in Iraq, Libya and other countries,” he said. “It has never delivered a straightforward desired outcome. For us, a straightforward desired outcome will happen on the negotiation table.”
Asked about whether the memorandum in June could still serve as the basis for a lasting agreement, Mr Al Ansari said the focus should be on whether the parties have the political will to reach a deal and what they would gain from it, rather than on the document itself.
He also said Gulf states should have a direct role in shaping any eventual settlement, noting that regional security concerns could not be addressed without the countries of the region.
“The future of our region has to be decided by our region,” he said. “This is why I think it is very important for all of us to sit together, very honestly and very frankly, and address these concerns in a way that goes beyond diplomatic niceties and beyond reducing a high-intensity conflict to a low-intensity conflict.
“When it comes to security, we have shown our worth. We have defended our countries. And when it comes to diplomacy, we have also shown our worth, and we will continue to work with our partners, regionally and beyond, to make sure that the regional element is part of the solution to this crisis.”
