Over the past month, the escalating crisis around the Strait of Hormuz has fuelled a highly polarised discourse. Observers and analysts have shifted from calling Iran’s choking of the Strait a ‘genius move of asymmetric warfare’ to calling it a ‘maritime hostage situation’. From a purely realpolitik standpoint, the Iranian actions would have appeared understandable, as the regime is fighting to survive. Yet many analytical commentaries echo the regime’s narrative, presenting the maritime closure of the 21-km Strait (its narrowest point) as either ‘legal’ or ‘legitimate’ under international law. Such defences are not merely questionable but, at times, outright deceptive.
Accordingly, a few clarifications are warranted to dispel the illusions surrounding the so-called jurisprudential defence of Iran. First, the prevailing myth in the current crisis is the claim that Iran can regulate the Strait because it lies ‘effectively’ within its territorial waters, and therefore Iran possesses sovereignty and legitimate control over the Strait as part of its “territorial sea” under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
While UNCLOS provides that the territorial sea limit is “not exceeding 12 nautical miles [22.2 km],” Iran has not ratified the Convention. Having signed it in 1982, Iran has yet to fully embrace its provisions. Article 38 of UNCLOS explicitly guarantees unimpeded and non-suspendable transit for all global shipping through international straits. The regime argues that Iran is not bound by UNCLOS and views the “transit” provisions as “contractual rights” meant exclusively for member states. To be fair, some states, including the US, are not party to UNCLOS. However, unlike Iran, these states frequently support various provisions of UNCLOS, viewing them, at least in large part, as customary international law.
The defence of the Iranian position has also tended to ignore a key geographical fact: Hormuz may have been named after Iran, but when it comes to the Strait, Iran shares territorial entitlements with another coastal state, Oman. The Strait is 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, and since both Iran and Oman have 12-nautical-mile territorial sea entitlements, the overlap leaves no “high seas” corridor in the middle. However, given that it is an international strait (a fact the regime itself keeps emphasising), both Iran and Oman are required to cooperate, including through the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), in designating sea lanes and Traffic Separation Schemes (TSS) to organise navigation. In such cases, Article 41 of UNCLOS limits coastal states to coordinating navigation through designated sea lanes and TSS, but does not permit such coordination to be used for policing or obstruction, except for limited regulatory powers regarding pollution or environmental concerns.
In Hormuz, the principal commercial shipping lanes under the TSS are, in part, structured by arrangements, including a 1974 agreement between Oman and Iran. Because the IRGC operates in shared territorial waters of the Strait, its unilateral interception of shipping or demands for transit fees arguably interferes with the “transit passage” regime governing the entire strait, including areas under Oman’s jurisdiction, as set out in Articles 38 and 44 of UNCLOS.
Prabhat Jawla
Interestingly, although Iran has not ratified UNCLOS, it has incorporated some of its provisions into domestic law, particularly through the Act on the Marine Areas of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea (1993). Under the Act, inter alia, Iran has claimed an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles from its baseline, granting it sovereign rights over natural resources and asserting restrictions on foreign military activities and navigation within its EEZ. While there is no issue with claiming the EEZ, the selective adoption of UNCLOS provisions cannot be viewed in isolation. Iran’s behaviour vis-à-vis UNCLOS, therefore, illustrates a classic case of cherry-picking: on the one hand, it refuses to adhere to the “transit passage” provisions, but on the other hand, it utilises the maritime economic benefits provided by UNCLOS. In other words, Iran has used its status as a non-ratifying signatory to deny its core navigational obligations, yet has sought to retain the economic benefits of the Convention.
Second, regarding transit, it is argued that Iran adheres to customary international law, which limits the scope of “innocent passage” and thereby affords Iran greater legal authority to monitor and restrict vessels it perceives as security threats. Iranian legal scholars frequently argue that Iran has been a “persistent objector” to “transit passage” and therefore is not obligated to provide it. But this claim is weak, as Iran has not demonstrated the consistent and unequivocal objections required to achieve “persistent objector” status. Iran’s domestic maritime legislation and cooperation with IMO frameworks sit uneasily with its claim of systemic objection.
Even if Iran’s preferred standard of “innocent passage” is entertained, there are no provisions that support suspending international maritime routes. A key antecedent of UNCLOS, the Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone (1958), under Article 16(4) clearly provides that “[…] shall be no suspension of the innocent passage of foreign ships through straits which are used for international navigation between one part of the high seas and another part of the high seas or the territorial sea of a foreign State.” Like UNCLOS, Iran has signed the 1958 Convention but has not ratified it, thereby allowing greater room to manoeuvre. Similarly, reliance on Article 25 of UNCLOS is misplaced, since it governs “innocent passage” in the territorial sea, not “transit passage” in international straits (applicable at Hormuz), where navigation is expressly non-suspendable and cannot be curtailed under the guise of security concerns.
However, even without ratification of UNCLOS or the 1958 Convention, obligations relating to “transit passage” may also be viewed in light of another Convention that Iran signed (but not ratified), namely the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) of 1969. In particular, Article 18 requires signatories not to defeat the object and purpose of a treaty they have signed, reinforcing a duty of good faith even in the absence of full ratification. For its part, Iran invokes Article 62 of the VCLT (rebus sic stantibus), arguing that the situation in the region constitutes a “fundamental change of circumstances” justifying the suspension and subsequent closure of Hormuz. Yet this is also an unsustainable argument, since the ICJ has established an exceptionally high threshold for such situations, as evident in the Gabcíkovo-Nagymaros Case (1997). More importantly, the San Remo Manual on Armed Conflicts at Sea (1994), a widely prominent document that reflects customary rules for maritime conflict, though non-binding, affirms in Paragraph 33 that, in international straits, the right of non-suspendable passage “may not be suspended in time of armed conflict.”
Third, the legal aspects of Hormuz frequently overlap with politics and ideology and therefore cannot be cleanly separated. Much of Iran’s defence is framed through an ideological prism that portrays Iran as resisting US intervention in the region. Yet, as a vanguard against Western “imperialism” and as fighting for the “oppressed” everywhere in the world, the Iranian regime’s behaviour in the Persian Gulf reveals myriad contradictions.
When the Shah’s imperial navy seized three strategically located islands belonging to the UAE—Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb—in November 1971, the regime, after coming to power in 1979, never rectified this monarchical land grab. Instead, it legitimised it by building military installations on those islands. The regime’s anti-imperialist stance elsewhere stands in contradiction to its expansionist legitimation in the Persian Gulf. Even today, the regime remains unwilling to negotiate or submit the dispute over these islands to the ICJ for arbitration, effectively acting as an expansionist power in the most traditional sense and indicating a broader pattern of contradictions in Iranian behaviour in the Persian Gulf that extends beyond the ‘legal’ domain. Iran’s continued refusal to submit this dispute to ICJ arbitration, something it has invoked rhetorically in the past, is most telling of its selective engagement with international institutions and norms, which is not unique to UNCLOS.
Fourth, Iran insists that it is targeting and primarily preventing US ships from transiting. However, this “resistance” to the US does not explain why the IRGC has been attacking and seizingships in the Persian Gulf for decades. In 2026, the war is an explanation, but what about the last two decades, during which seizing ships appears to have become a customary practice by the IRGC?
Such harassment has only intensified with the war this year, but there is still no explanation of why Gulf countries or even non-Gulf countries are being targeted that are not even at war with Iran. From the Iranian viewpoint, it is not necessarily at war with Gulf countries but only targeting their territoriesinsofar as they were used by the US to launch attacks against Iran. Yet it does not explain why their ships are being targeted or why trade routes are being disrupted.
In India’s case, while Iran allowed many tankers to pass through the Strait, there were reports of some ships being targeted. For example, the MKD VYOM (March 1) was attacked by a drone boat operated by the IRGC, killing one Indian sailor. Similarly, on April 18, two vessels (Sanmar Herald and Jag Arnav) were targeted north of Oman. The former was an Indian-flagged vessel carrying Iraqi oil destined for India and not participating in the US campaign. Yet somehow this maritime coercion is to be viewed as “resistance.” Under any reasonable reading of the laws of armed conflict, targeting vessels uninvolved in hostilities constitutes indiscriminate maritime coercion, regardless of the accompanying political justification.
Fifth, the entire episode of the blockade and targeting of the ship has received ample attention. But the other half is far more severe, long-lasting, and not adequately taken seriously: the issue of laying mines. The bedrock of maritime customary law regarding navigational hazards, as set by the ICJ in the landmark 1949 Corfu Channel case, holds that states bear significant responsibility, grounded in due diligence and elementary considerations of humanity, for lethal hazards within their territorial waters and for informing ships passing through them.
Such provisions assign responsibility to coastal states, on “elementary considerations of humanity,” to warn international shipping. Yet the Iranian foreign minister, whether posturing or speaking genuinely, delivered a cryptic message that many observers interpreted as Iran’s reservations about its ability to demine the Strait promptly and effectively. Such conduct is not merely a violation of international customary law but also a grave danger to international shipping that extends beyond the current conflict. Iran has taken considerable time to explain and portray the power it holds in the Strait of Hormuz, yet after the ceasefire there has been no roadmap for how and when such mines can be located and removed.
Sixth, the recent brinkmanship by the Iranian regime at Hormuz has followed another misguided notion that Iran can and must levy ships passing through the Strait. A proposal for this is underway in the Iranian Majlis. A strait is naturally occurring, unlike human-made canals such as the Suez andPanama Canals. These canals are built by countries that sacrifice their own territory and incur high costs, for which they retain the right to charge passage fees.
But Hormuz is a strait, and Article 26(1) of UNCLOS states, “no charge may be levied upon foreign ships by reason only of their passage through the territorial sea.” As a result, it falls substantially short of international norms and laws on the matter. The Singaporean Foreign Minister, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, summed it up best when he remarked that transit passage, “[…] is not a privilege to be granted by the bordering state, it is not a license to be supplicated for, it is not a toll to be paid. It is a right of ships to traverse.”
Thus, Iran may believe it has the right to control the entire Strait of Hormuz, but that control is neither exclusive nor absolute. Both Iran and Oman have overlapping territorial sea entitlements within the Strait. Because the Strait is a vital route for international navigation connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, the legal regime of “transit passage” applies irrespective of formal ratification, as it is widely regarded as reflecting customary international law. Therefore, any attempt by Iran to treat the Strait as its exclusive preserve or sovereign domain cannot be sustained under international law.
Meanwhile, many observers who defend Iranian actions may be seduced by the idea of Iranian “resistance” to US actions, but such claims collapse under scrutiny. Celebrating “resistance” comes at the cost of international norms and conventions, which is not only risky and harmful but also contradictory. Iran cannot be both: it cannot resist the US’s power politics and ‘might is right’ approach while, at the same time, replicating the same behaviour in the Strait.
As such, Iran’s adherence to UNCLOS or customary international law is selective at best and sets a dangerous precedent. Accordingly, the Iranian actions in Hormuz cannot be explained or justified by legal loopholes, because they are, first and foremost, political in origin and carried out through old-fashioned ‘use of force’. Targeting civilian trade ships and taxing global commerce while engaging in maritime coercion confirms what most have been saying in the region: while ostensibly standing up to US bullying in the region, Iran itself has become the bully of the Persian Gulf.
The author teaches at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
