Should Iran control Hormuz?

Ask the Iranians, and they will entirely endorse the claim. A growing number of international analysts call it Iran's nuclear option. Iran's real nuclear journey now seems relegated to this newfound pleasure of choking the world at will. Ask the Pakistanis, and most will gloat over how Iran, the brave, has taken Trump, America, and the West in a chokehold. Crediting Iran for standing up to the bully is one thing, even if it has cost Iran an arm and a leg, and a lot of blood and treasure, which we will perhaps never get the true estimate of, but to reinforce what is stifling and suffocating for the rest is blatant. Even more importantly, Trump and the US may never asphyxiate, or if so, perhaps slowly, but the rest would surely have life squeezed out of them much faster and much earlier.

Celebrating Trump's predicament as a loser and America getting its face blackened by Islamic Iran are all happy tidings that most Muslims may smile about and chuckle in corners, but it truly takes us closer to what Samuel Huntington had prophesied a couple of decades back. History must find its new direction when one phase is over, Francis Fukuyama would now agree. When Huntington came out with his theory of the clash of civilisations, these were the same Muslims who huffed at another white man sighting his guns on Islam as a civilisation, now that the Soviet Union seemed to have closed its chapter as the West's favourite whipping boy. One turn of the geopolitical play, and one strategic error down, and the same champions of Islam are happily pitting the Iranian Islamic brothers against Trump, America, and the West. How is that for a requital?

This 'love' is mutual, of course. Israel would rather see all of Iran drowned in Hormuz. Iran's Arab neighbours, especially the GCC countries, likewise. The UAE, surely. Saudi Arabia is circumspect – it finds a certain advantage in Iran being an effective counterweight to Israel's naked aggression against the Palestinians and their Arab neighbours. Alone, it may not be able to withstand the pressure of an advancing Israel in pursuit of 'Greater Israel'. The US would not like Iran to be nuclear-weaponised. If prudence were to judge, most nations of the world would agree to this American stance. Beyond that, the US finds itself fighting an ungainly war in a category below its league. And it wants out. Iran and the world know it and relish the sight of a goliath trapped by a middling power. China, its nemesis, is waiting around the corner, but no one is letting the US escape its predicament. The logjam persists.

Back to Hormuz. Forget the oil, though, we cannot because nations like ours are barely keeping afloat, even as thousands go below the poverty line every day around super-inflationary trends and are unable to feed their kin to stay alive. Pakistan has had an increase of around five per cent of its 250 million population, added to those who barely survive below the poverty line. Not all of it is around the climbing energy prices because of oil disruptions, but Hormuz has surely accelerated the decline and pushed many more into the poverty trap, where staying alive is a challenge. According to World Bank estimates, around 830 million people worldwide live in poverty. This war, unless it stops now, will add around forty million more to this number. Just for reference, that is more than 10 per cent of the world population and would be the world's third largest entity behind China and India. How many frustrate themselves to death around, hunger, poverty and lack of access to essentials for life, and you can judge the depravity of our leisure. The gladiatorial clasp that Iran has on the roaring lion makes for a fascinating spectacle.

One explanation suggests that a deranged, possessed man has gotten hold of a rock and is about to smash a head. The US and Israel attacked Iran on flimsy grounds, a travesty. One can understand why Israel would do so, but that it got Trump and the US entangled in an unnecessary war is the sadder and sillier part of it. But what has followed cannot stand to any reason. Iran fired around 1300 ballistic and cruise missiles into Israel, but it sent in twice that amount into the UAE. The latter rightly asks why so? Iran did a roughly 30 billion USD trade with the UAE on unofficial channels and was Iran's window to the world, yet it continued to receive most of Iran's reprisal. The rest of the Gulf, too, in proportionate measure. This rock is being used to knock off the neighbour's kids. Ironically, the real perpetrators are not as adversely impacted by 'galloping' inflation or a 'looming' recession, nor the supply chain disruptions, yet. They may, but the entire village would be dead by then, including the rock-bearing Iran. The race is on to see who dies last. It surely cannot get more perverse.

As Donald Trump parleys in China with Xi Jinping, there is equal rejoicing among the literati in his weakened posture because of an inconclusive Iran war. They are right. Trump would have liked to visit Xi after successfully concluding the war, but then strategic blunders entail a cost. Looked at in another way. Xi may be able to use the opportunity to rescue the remnants of a world order that China and the rest of the world so desperately wish to keep in place, from a Trump who is crashing it down in callous disregard. This will also include the UNCLOS (UN Convention on the Laws of the Seas), which enables freedom of navigation and free trade using the international commons for the wider good. That will reinforce the absurdity in the current Iranian claim to sovereignty over Hormuz, or, for that matter, any future claim by a littoral claimant of a critical strait. (Suez and Panama are man-made; hence the two exceptions.) Xi can also push Trump to respect covenants regarding the sovereignty of independent nations under the United Nations Charter, desist from unilateral aggression, and restore the United Nations to its role as an arbiter.

Looking at the Iran war through the Trump or the American prism isn't the best way to resolve an impending international disaster. That also does not qualify Iran to make illegal and irrational claims to what are patently international commons. Rejoicing in an underdog's upmanship can chaff a hegemon's plight; it isn't the recipe for saving from a waiting catastrophe. Iran has done well. It must know how to keep its gains tight without expanding its territorial or notional boundaries. And let the world settle back into a normal place. Ditto the bully. Xi can help resurrect rules which will save the world from being a jungle. Men and women of wisdom, pay heed.