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While Iran’s population struggles with a limbo that represents neither war nor peace, Tehran's leadership faces a new challenge: how to maintain its recently found leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.
Management of the vital maritime passage is now central to efforts to permanently end the conflict. In Tehran’s eyes, one thing is clear: it does not want a return to the prewar status quo in the waterway.
The Strait of Hormuz has become a new “leverage of deterrence”, and a tool that Iran is using to maintain balance in a new equation in relations between itself and the West, according to Abdolreza Davari, who was an adviser to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and personally knows the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
“What we are witnessing today is more of a new normal in Iran-West relations,” he told The National. “That is, neither direct confrontation nor a lasting agreement; rather, an intermediate state in which each side seeks to contain the other without resorting to war.”
The Islamic Republic has been blockading the strait for two months, preventing the passage of ships carrying oil and gas and prompting a dramatic rise in global energy prices. It says it has collected tolls from ships it has allowed to pass, prompting angry responses from other regional countries that seek unhindered passage.
In turn, the US last month began a blockade of Iran’s southern ports, in an attempt to choke its economy by preventing crude exports to its main client, China. Iranian military commanders continued to threaten attacks on vessels attempting to pass through the strait, using “bee swarms” of small speedboats operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
A fifth of the world’s global crude oil and liquefied natural gas supplies normally pass through the strait, which is 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point.
Iran losing control of the waterway is “highly unlikely”, Mr Davari added. “Geographically, militarily and strategically, Iran holds a dominant position over the strait. The presence of regional forces and Iran's asymmetric capabilities (particularly in the maritime domain) have meant that no actor can easily alter this equation.”
Iranian politicians and officials reacted angrily over the weekend to a proposal by US President Donald Trump to guide ships from “neutral and innocent bystander” countries through the strait.
“Any American interference in the new maritime regime of the Strait of Hormuz will be considered a violation of the ceasefire,” Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, wrote on X, indicating that Tehran will respond to any attempt to disrupt its control over who passes and who does not. A multinational maritime security body has warned that the threat level in the Strait of Hormuz remains “critical”.
Iranian politicians have also taken to mocking the US for what they see as Washington's bind over a failed military operation and resorting to pressuring the country using Hormuz.
"The way to open the Strait of Hormuz is either to accept defeat, reach an agreement, and accept Iran's sovereignty and leadership over the Strait of Hormuz, or to return to the [battle] field, accept another humiliating defeat, and accept Iran's sovereignty and leadership over the Strait of Hormuz. There is no other way," Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for the parliament's national security and foreign affairs commission, wrote on X.
Indicating that Iran is preparing for a continued US blockade of its ports, Tehran is seeking to expand its land trade with neighbouring countries. That may help it withstand the inflationary impact of the blockade, which is exacerbating the country's already high inflation. Pakistan last week opened six land routes to transport goods from its ports to Iran.
None of Iran’s neighbours, even those with competing strategic interests, such as Turkey and Azerbaijan, have joined the US blockade by sealing their land borders, the New York-based Soufan Centre, an analysis group, said in a briefing published on Monday.
“Iranian leaders are trying to circumvent, mitigate, or otherwise thwart the US economic stranglehold long enough to allow the deteriorating global economic conditions to compel Trump to end the war on terms favourable to Tehran,” the centre said.
Iran is also banking on its ability to further disrupt global trade by maintaining the Bab Al Mandeb strait in the Red Sea as an alternative pressure point. The artery, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal, is another vital trade route that could come under attack by the Houthis, an Iran-backed Yemeni group.
“If maximum pressure is applied to Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, the possibility of disruption in Bab Al Mandeb also comes into play as part of the deterrence equation,” Mr Davari added.
Back-and-forth negotiations
Alongside continuing volleys of economic and military pressure, Iran and the US continue to exchange draft agreements via mediator Pakistan over plans to definitively end the war. A fragile ceasefire has held since April 8, although Israel continues to carry out strikes in Lebanon and the US and Iran continue to trade accusations of violations in the Strait of Hormuz.
According to Mahdi Arab Sadegh, a Tehran-based analyst, Iranian officials should not negotiate with the US while its blockade of Iranian ports continues because it would send the unintended message that Iran is willing to legitimise the shut-in.
In his view – which reflects that of many pro-government commentators in Iran – the US failed to defeat Iran militarily and is now attempting to quash it with economic pressure. That is a tactic that Tehran also believes it can withstand, especially by using its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz. Analysts have previously told The National that Tehran calculates that it will be able to bear the economic pressures of the status quo for longer than the US is prepared to.
Mr Trump is “more stuck” in the current “strategic stalemate” than Iran, Mr Arab Sadegh said. The country is “besieged, but it has worn down the besiegers”, sanctioned, “but has maintained its oil exports”, and “threatened, but it has not sat at a forced negotiating table”, he said.
Other Iranian observers are more cautious. Mohammad Ali Sayedhanaee, a Tehran-based analyst, said Hormuz should be used as a short-term "tactical instrument of pressure," not a long-term strategy.
"It can provide bargaining leverage if used carefully and selectively, but overuse or full disruption would likely backfire, increase international pressure on Iran, and eventually work to its disadvantage," he wrote in a message to The National.
Tehran should also focus on "national reconciliation" at home, he said – a tacit recognition of the deep divides in Iranian society – and "a more stable regional posture abroad", including normalising ties with neighbours while deepening engagement with China and Europe.
Apparent cracks within the Iranian establishment over the wisdom of negotiating with the US have emerged in recent days. Hardliners in Iran have criticised officials for interacting at all with the US, when they feel Iran has won from the war and should not give an inch.
Mr Arab Sadegh said internal disputes are less real differences and more part of Iran’s strategy. The obvious presence of hardliners rejecting any sort of interaction with the US is part of the “good cop–bad cop of our politics, not a strategic rift”, he said. “It sends this message to Washington: ‘We still have the option of resistance on the table – so offer a better deal.’”
Indeed, Iran is not looking for a quick deal, analysts believe. It is more interested in ensuring that it does not normalise the US blockade or fail to achieve political wins, such as sanctions relief or recognition of its greater control over Hormuz.
The current ceasefire has “created a setting in which diplomacy, coercion, and uncertainty coexist,” Hamidreza Azizi, an analyst based in Berlin, wrote in a recent briefing. “The current diplomatic effort is less about moving towards a rapid settlement than about avoiding the consolidation of a prolonged equilibrium in which pressure persists without resolution.”
Against a backdrop of severe mutual mistrust between the US and Iran, negotiating efforts are a tool in which Tehran’s main objectives are to reduce economic pressures, particularly sanctions, consolidate its regional position, and buy time to strengthen its domestic capabilities, Mr Davari said. “For Iran, negotiation is a tactic within a larger strategy, not an end in itself,” he said.
