There is a whole bunch of legal luminaries from India and across the world preaching from the safety of dry land about archaic legal points while real ships, real crews, and real economies hang in the balance in one of the world’s most volatile chokepoints. They brandish UNCLOS articles, San Remo Manuals, Newport Manuals, Corfu Channel precedents, and even the US Naval War College’s own restatements as if they were holy writ capable of stopping a destroyer’s boarding party or an IRGC fast-attack boat. This is the geopolitical equivalent of preaching chapters from the Bhagavad Gita to a man drowning in the Persian Gulf: profound moral clarity, zero practical buoyancy.
Let’s be brutally honest. In the Strait of Hormuz right now, the only law that actually matters is the oldest one: might is right. Everything else is decorative. Iran tried to turn a critical international waterway into its personal toll booth, complete with crypto payments and armed escorts. The US, fresh off bombing Iranian military and nuclear assets, responded by declaring it would physically prevent that chokehold and blow up anyone who interfered. Both sides are violating the sacred transit-passage regime of customary international law. Our legal experts meticulously document multiple separate ways Trump’s blockade announcement fails the legal test. Splendid. But I’m not sure if the US Navy strike cell commanders are losing sleep over whether their operation satisfies the impartiality requirement under the Declaration of Paris (1856).
Meanwhile, India has 460 seafarers and multiple tankers potentially in the crossfire, strategic petroleum reserves that last less than ten days, and 90 per cent of its LPG imports historically routed through this mess. Our experts’ grand solution? India should loudly affirm the consistent application of UNCLOS Article 44 to both violators, prepare rules of engagement for potential boarding incidents, and avoid the “legal symmetry trap.” In other words: hold another seminar, issue a carefully calibrated statement of “Kadi Ninda,” and hope the boarding officers and minefields respect and appreciate Delhi’s doctrinal consistency.
This is performative legalism at its finest. Our experts treat international law as a neutral referee that gives justice to all, when in reality it has always been a tool that strong states invoke when convenient and ignore when necessary. Many experts even resort to history: Lincoln’s blockade, the Cuban “quarantine,” Reagan’s mining of Nicaragua, the UN-authorised Iraq blockade. Great powers have always bent, stretched, or simply ignored these rules when core interests were at stake. Trump is merely doing it with less fig-leaf eloquence than Kennedy’s lawyers. The US Naval War College manual may indeed condemn the approach on paper, but the actual Naval War College graduates commanding the carriers and destroyers in theatre will follow orders, not footnotes.
The way forward for India isn’t to agonise over whether it can publicly condemn both illegalities with perfect symmetry while maintaining strategic autonomy. That’s academic play acting. The practical path is hard-nosed, interest-driven negotiation with the parties who actually control the guns and the ships: Washington, Tehran, and whoever else can influence the corridor. Quiet diplomacy, backchannel deals, side payments, security guarantees, whatever works to keep Indian tankers moving and seafarers safe. Modi already did some of this with a direct call to Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian. That pragmatic approach got ships through for six weeks. Doubling down on legal sermons in seminars or op-eds is counterproductive when the “boarding officers and strike cell commanders” will decide outcomes with radar, missiles, and rules of engagement, not citations from the San Remo Manual.
India’s exposure is real. Pretending the solution lies in superior legal analysis or consistent invocation of customary law is a fantasy. Our experts are essentially telling a nation facing an immediate energy and maritime security crisis to prioritise doctrinal purity over survival. In a world where great powers are once again treating chokepoints as arenas of raw power, India’s priority must be protecting its citizens, its economy, and its energy lifelines through whatever mix of diplomacy, deterrence, and deal-making actually works on the water—not through elegant dissections of multiple failures in blockade law.
In Hormuz today, legal rights are worth approximately as much as the paper they are printed on. What matters is who can enforce their will, who can protect neutral shipping in practice, and who India can cut workable deals with before its reserves run dry and its tankers become targets. The rest is seminar fodder.
(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.)