Opinion: YOU CAN BOMB A STRAIT SHUT. YOU CANNOT BOMB A STRAIT OPEN

YOU CAN BOMB A STRAIT SHUT. YOU CANNOT BOMB A STRAIT OPEN.

 

 

Lim Tean is the Secretary General of the People’s Alliance For Reform Singapore

Facts For Working People publishes this article for our readers interests and is not affiliated with the Alliance for Reform. Lim Tean on Substack FFWP Admin

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by Lim Tean 

 

Trump is being catastrophically advised by men who have never worked a single day in the commercial world. I spent more than three decades in shipping law. Let me tell you what his advisers cannot.

 

The Americans are bombing Iran again — coastal radars, air defences, minelaying capabilities — and telling the world they are doing it to “keep the Strait of Hormuz open.”

 

This is not merely wrong. It is legally and commercially illiterate. Let me explain why, on four grounds.

 

FIRST — THE MOU ITSELF, WHICH AMERICA IS DELIBERATELY FLOUTING.

Read Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum, which Trump himself signed. It provides that IRAN will make arrangements for the safe passage of commercial vessels. That IRAN will carry out the demining. That IRAN, in dialogue with Oman and the other littoral states, will define the future administration and maritime services of the Strait — “in line with the sovereign rights of the coastal states.”

 

Every operational obligation in Article 5 rests on Iran. Under this Article, it is Iran that decides how vessels traverse the Strait. And read that last phrase again: the sovereign rights of the COASTAL STATES. Iran is a coastal state of Hormuz. Oman is a coastal state of Hormuz. The United States is NOT. Washington signed a document that gives it no role whatsoever in the administration of the Strait — and Iran and Oman have already reached agreement on regulating traffic under Article 5, including the designated route past Qeshm Island.

 

So what has America done? It has unilaterally sponsored a rival “southern corridor” to bypass the Iranian routing altogether — a deliberate flouting of the very mechanism Article 5 establishes, and a direct repudiation of the document Trump’s own signature sits on. Iran’s Foreign Minister has formally accused Washington of violating the Memorandum. He is right.

 

And now watch the sleight of hand. CENTCOM and a chorus of Western governments have fallen back on the old refrain: Hormuz is “an international waterway,” they say, and Iran has no right to control it. Let me say this plainly: that argument is a RED HERRING. It is dead. Trump killed it with his own pen on 17 June.

 

You cannot sign an agreement committing the administration of the Strait to the coastal states — and then run back to the “international waterway” argument when the administration doesn’t go your way. Ask yourselves this: if Hormuz were simply an open international waterway requiring no administration by anyone, why does Article 5 exist at all? Why did America NEGOTIATE a clause defining who administers the Strait? You do not bargain over the administration of a waterway you claim nobody may administer. The moment Trump signed Article 5, the United States accepted that the Strait’s future would be settled by its coastal states — Iran and Oman — and signed itself out of the room. Whatever the “international waterway” argument may be worth in a law school seminar, it is no longer available to the United States. Washington is estopped by its own signature. Every diplomat and general now reciting this line is trying to confuse the world — and hoping you never read the document their President signed.

 

And it gets worse. The Americans are simultaneously bombing Qeshm, Bandar Abbas, and Iran’s coastal radars and mine-clearing capabilities — the very assets Iran requires to PERFORM Article 5. Every commercial lawyer knows this doctrine: you cannot demand performance of a contract while destroying the other party’s means of performing it. That is prevention of performance. The Americans are not enforcing the MOU. They are breaching it twice over — circumventing its mechanism and destroying its performance — and then blaming Iran for the consequences.

 

And what do America’s lackeys in the region and beyond say to all this? Nothing. They cheer. Not one of these client states has uttered a word about the plain terms of an agreement their patron signed barely a month ago. Meanwhile Israel, which always opposed the Memorandum, is straining at the leash — its Defence Minister openly declaring the army ready to resume bombing Iran “with even greater force,” while Iranian media report projectiles striking near Bushehr. The vultures are circling the corpse of a deal America itself killed.

 

SECOND — THE INSURANCE REALITY.

As I have been explaining for days now, wars at sea are not decided by admirals. They are decided by underwriters in London. War risk premiums, Joint War Committee listed areas, P&I cover — these are the invisible hands that open and close the world’s waterways. Every American strike sends premiums higher. No American strike has ever brought a premium down. The bombs are shutting the Strait more firmly with each sortie.

 

THIRD — THE SAFE PORT DOCTRINE.

Here is what Trump’s advisers plainly do not know. Under every charterparty, the charterer owes the shipowner a duty to nominate a SAFE port. The classic test, laid down in the case of The Eastern City nearly seventy years ago, is whether the vessel can reach the port, use it, and leave it without being exposed to dangers that good navigation and seamanship cannot avoid.

 

The House of Lords, then Britain’s highest judicial body, applied this to war in The Evia (No. 2) — Basrah, rendered unsafe by the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq war. I lived with these cases my entire professional life.

 

Today, with missiles and drones flying across the Gulf, EVERY port in the Persian Gulf is arguably an unsafe port. No charterer can lawfully order a vessel there. Every shipowner can refuse under the war risk clauses — CONWARTIME, VOYWAR — written into virtually every charterparty on earth. The lawyers will keep the Gulf closed long after the bombing stops.

 

FOURTH — THE MASTER’S OVERRIDING AUTHORITY.

And there is one final authority the Pentagon cannot bomb, sanction or overrule: the Master of the vessel.

 

Since time immemorial, the law of the sea has vested in the Master absolute discretion over the safety of his ship and his crew. If the Master judges a port unsafe, he may refuse to sail there — and NOBODY can compel him. Not the charterer. Not even the owners of the vessel. This ancient principle is now codified in SOLAS itself: neither owner nor charterer may prevent or restrict the Master from any decision necessary, in his professional judgement, for the safety of life at sea.

 

Think about what this means. Even if Washington declares the Strait “open,” even if owners are tempted by sky-high freight rates, thousands of individual ship Masters — men responsible for their crews’ lives — will simply say NO. And the law of every maritime nation on earth stands behind them.

 

THE VERDICT.

A strait is not reopened by CENTCOM. It is reopened by the Joint War Committee, the P&I clubs, the charterers’ lawyers, and the Masters on the bridge. None of them answer to Donald Trump.

 

And mark this prediction: if America continues down this road, the contagion will spread. The Red Sea will follow. Yanbu — Saudi Arabia’s great oil port — will itself come to be regarded as an unsafe port. Then the crisis will no longer be about one strait, but about the entire maritime architecture of the Middle East.

 

You can bomb a strait shut. You cannot bomb a strait open. Someone should tell the President before his advisers shut down world trade.