The UN-established process to allow vessels carrying fertiliser to pass through the Strait of Hormuz has not faced technical objections, but is being held up by diplomacy, a senior UN official told The National.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, UN undersecretary general and executive director of the UN Office for Project Services, warned in an interview with The National that the pursuit of a broader US-Iran peace deal has caught the crucial operation in a diplomatic web.
He spoke in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly high-level debate week, where he met all parties and urged them to allow the system to operate and ease the global impact of the disruption.
"Nobody [is] expressing concerns about the design of the mechanism. So ... from a technical point of view, the mechanism seems to make sense," Mr da Silva said.
However, "we didn't get Iran and US agreeing on the mechanism, and I think that this is the big dilemma that we are facing", he added.
Before the Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz handled about 20 to 30 per cent of global fertiliser exports overall. After the war began in late February, export volumes initially fell to less than 5 per cent of pre-war levels.
As a result, the UN says that almost 45 million people could fall into acute food insecurity because of the disruption in the strait.
The US and Iran have signed a framework agreement that should have paved the way for a broader peace deal, but retaliatory attacks have resumed in recent weeks amid a diplomatic deadlock and a push for a comprehensive deal that appears to be increasingly elusive.
The two sides met in New York this week in what appeared to be a diplomatic breakthrough, but no tangible results have emerged and both countries quickly returned to their war of words and threats.
Complex framework
"The US and Iran are trying to get a deal, a big deal, which is about dealing with everything. There is a conflict, and they are trying hard … as we have seen in the last few days, to engage and to find common ground about everything," Mr da Silva said.
"But my message is, in the meantime, knowing that this big negotiation may take some time … it will be important to allow the UN to put in place a mechanism that would alleviate the suffering of the people, particularly related to food insecurity."
The system, which would be up and running in about seven days once it has the political approval, would register vessels seeking to collect cargo, co-ordinate their deconfliction through a joint centre in Salalah, and provide them with safe routes and GPS co-ordinates.
The UN would then monitor and verify cargo loading at Gulf and other ports, track the vessels on their journeys in and out, and report the results to the international community.
For the UNOPS chief, this is a "pretty simple operation" that has been done elsewhere, namely in Gaza with the aid trucks entering, in Yemen with the vessels coming from Djibouti, and in the Black Sea.
"This is not more difficult, from a conflict point of view, than other contexts," said Mr da Silva. “What is probably more demanding is the diplomatic negotiations, because in other cases what I [am] basically doing is I'm there to implement the project. In this case, [there are] diplomatic negotiations and only then we can do the project," he added.
"This is a more complex framework," explained the UN official, while expressing hope that this week "will be the moment" for a breakthrough.
