Iraq, Pakistan ink Hormuz safe passage deals with Iran: Report
The Cradle | May 13, 2026
Iraq and Pakistan have reached separate arrangements with Iran to move crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Strait of Hormuz under Tehran’s new system for controlled passage through the strategic waterway, Reuters reported on 12 May.
The deals come as the US-Israeli war on Iran has sharply reduced energy exports from the Gulf, a region that normally supplies 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and LNG.
Claudio Steuer of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies told Reuters that “Iran has shifted from blocking Hormuz to controlling access to it … Hormuz is no longer a neutral transit route, it is a controlled corridor.”
Under this new framework, Iraq secured safe passage for two very large crude carriers, each carrying about 2 million barrels of crude, through the strait on Sunday.
An Iraqi oil ministry official said Baghdad is now seeking Iranian approval for additional shipments, as oil revenue makes up 95 percent of the Iraqi budget.
“Iraq is a close ally of Iran, and any deterioration in Iraq’s economy would also damage Iran’s economic interests in the country,” the official said.
In a separate arrangement, two tankers carrying Qatari LNG are heading to Pakistan after Islamabad reached an agreement with Tehran, according to two industry sources cited by Reuters.
The sources said neither Iraq nor Pakistan made direct payments to Iran or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the transits.
Industry sources said Tehran is formalizing control over the strait by asking Baghdad to submit documents for each tanker, including destination, shipping details, ownership, and cargo specifications.
A Pakistani source told Reuters that the process has not been smooth, saying, “The IRGC sometimes changes the goalposts, so it is hard to keep things on track, but we are working through it.”
Amid the chokehold of the US–Iran double blockade, maritime activity through the vital Strait of Hormuz has withered to a mere five percent of its normal capacity, staggering global economies and energy markets.
The blockade has pushed Pakistan to open six overland routes for Iran-bound cargo, giving Tehran an alternative land corridor as the US blockade disrupts maritime trade through the Gulf.
A military correspondent for The Cradle reported that Pakistan issued the “Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026” on 25 April, designating Karachi Port, Port Qasim, and Gwadar Deep-Sea Port to receive cargo bound for Iran and Central Asia through the Taftan border crossing.
The move could help clear around 3,000 Iranian containers stranded in Karachi after restrictions on ships traveling to and from Iran left food and consumer goods stuck at Pakistani ports.
Former Pakistani information minister Mushahid Hussain Syed said the new corridor gained importance after “the US Navy’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz since 13 April,” but stressed that Islamabad sees the arrangement as a commercial decision rather than a direct escalation with Washington.
“The unfair blockade has left thousands of Iranian containers stuck at Karachi ports, which has made it harder for people in Iran to get consumer goods,” Syed told The Cradle.
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From the Archives
Britain’s secret role in the brutal US war in Vietnam
By Mark Curtis | MintPress News | November 16, 2022
There is a myth the UK did not support Washington’s war against Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Labour and Conservative governments backed every phase of US military escalation and played secret roles in the conflict, declassified files show.
- UK sent SAS team to Vietnam in 1962, flew secret RAF missions to deliver arms, and provided intelligence to US
- UK governments lied to parliament they were not providing military advice to South Vietnam’s brutal regime
- Labour government secretly gave arms to US for use in Vietnam, stressing need for “no publicity”
- It also connived with Washington to deceive UK public over its support for US
- UK governments knew of atrocities against civilians but backed US war aims
- Whitehall only started to advocate a peaceful solution, on US terms, once the war became unwinnable
During its war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s the US dropped more bombs than in the whole of World War Two, in a conflict that killed over two million people. The wholesale destruction of villages and killing of innocent people was a permanent feature of the US war from the beginning, along with widespread indiscriminate bombing.
Britain’s role in the war has been largely buried and must be almost completely unknown to the public. When the UK media mentions the war now, reports often simply reference the refusal by Harold Wilson’s government to agree to US requests to openly deploy British troops.
Although this was certainly a public rebuff to Washington, Britain did virtually everything else to back the US war over more than a decade, the declassified documents show. … continue
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