Israeli Press
Bar'el writes Iran nears control of Hormuz without nuclear concessions
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
Iran is close to emerging from the war holding the Strait of Hormuz — a prize it never dreamed of before — without surrendering its nuclear program, the Middle East analyst Zvi Bar'el wrote Thursday in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
The emerging Iran-Oman arrangement would split the mined strait into an "Iranian route" for inbound shipping and an Omani route outbound, Bar'el reported, with every vessel bound for a Gulf port required to seek clearance from an Iranian "Hormuz Gulf Authority" — and Tehran demanding transit fees of 5 to 10 percent of cargo value against Oman's proposed 3.
The sixty-day interim deal is built to pull Washington back to the June memorandum, in Bar'el's reading: sanctions relief, an American withdrawal from Iran, a 300-billion-dollar development fund and the unfreezing of more than 120 billion in Iranian assets.
The analyst's sharpest observation is regional. The Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, drew the war's military limits themselves and became Iran's protective shield, he wrote — shrinking America's room to act while their own economies bleed, from Riyadh's 33.5-billion-dollar first-quarter deficit to the Houthi blockade rerouting Saudi tankers since late July.
Iran paid in kind — inflation near 80 percent, a rial approaching two million to the dollar — yet holds the chokepoint. Bar'el closed on the question left standing: how Donald Trump will paint this as total victory.
