Sitting ducks: Why the US security umbrella no longer protects the Gulf?
By Dr Mustafa Fetouri| MEMO | July 16, 2026
In Kuwait alone—less than 150 kilometres across the Gulf from Iran—the United States maintains a major military hub of approximately 13,500 personnel spread across installations such as Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem Air Base. To its south, Saudi Arabia hosts roughly 2,700 U.S. troops, centered at Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj. Elsewhere in the Gulf, every state hosts either a US military presence or provides access and defence cooperation under bilateral agreements: Qatar houses more than 10,000 personnel at CENTCOM’s sprawling forward headquarters at Al Udeid; Bahrain hosts around 9,000 personnel at the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet; the UAE accommodates approximately 3,500 personnel at Al Dhafra while providing deep-water naval access at Jebel Ali; and Oman offers strategic port and airfield access under bilateral agreements, despite having no large permanent US troop presence.
Beyond the Gulf monarchies, Washington maintains approximately 2,500 troops in Iraq and around 900 in northeastern Syria under Operation Inherent Resolve. To Iran’s northwest, the US operates from Incirlik Air Base in Türkiye— a NATO logistics and intelligence hub too. Until its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, American forces also maintained a major military presence along Iran’s eastern frontier, supported for two decades by extensive supply routes and intelligence cooperation through Pakistan. Although the US lies nearly 10,000 kilometres from Iran, it has constructed an unparalleled regional military architecture of permanent bases, rotational deployments, naval facilities, pre-positioned equipment, access agreements, and security partnerships that stretches from the Eastern Mediterranean across the Gulf to the western Indian Ocean. Combined with the military capabilities of close allies—including Britain, France, and Türkiye—this network almost literally surrounding Iran from all sides. The common thread underpinning this posture has long been the protection of regional partners, the safeguarding of global energy routes, and the defence of US strategic interests.
Yet, this foundational premise has collapsed under the weight of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has fundamentally transformed the entire regional security landscape. This “war of choice” has exposed how a security arrangement once marketed as an ironclad insurance policy has devolved into a primary strategic liability.
Rather than serving as an effective deterrent, large and static American military installations now act as strategic liability—drawing Iranian retaliatory strikes while denying host states true autonomy or the promised protective shield.
The Gulf states have discovered, at a heavy price, that they are trapped in an impossible paradox: their sovereign territory serves as a staging ground for military operations they were never consulted about—at least that is what they say publically –instantly transforming their critical infrastructure, oil facilities, and urban centers into high-priority targets. Compounding this vulnerability is the stark geopolitical reality that while Washington may eventually pivot away or withdraw—much as it did from Afghanistan—Iran is a permanent neighbour that is going nowhere.
Beyond the immediate threat of missile strikes, the presence of these US installations directly undermines the core national strategies of the Gulf monarchies. Mega-development projects and economic diversification plans—from Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to Dubai’s global trade hubs—rely entirely on an image of absolute regional stability, investor confidence, and open maritime transit. By hosting forward US bases, host nations inadvertently tie their economic futures to Washington’s military posture, creating an environment of perpetual crisis. Furthermore, defending these expansive American footprints forces host militaries to consume their own finite air-defense interceptors and defense budgets to guard US assets rather than securing their own national borders.
At the same time, while almost all Gulf States have, at least publicly, refrained from taking direct offensive action against Iran to avoid total escalation, they recognise that they are already viewed as passive participants in the wider conflict.
Maintaining this precarious balancing act is becoming increasingly difficult against rising domestic anti-war sentiment, as public anger over regional devastation steadily erodes the host governments’ domestic credibility.
For Washington, this massive network of forward-deployed bases has produced a profound strategic paradox. What was designed to project uninhibited American power now ties US freedom of action to the political consent of cautious host nations. When host governments impose strict sovereignty restrictions—refusing permission for US forces to launch offensive sorties or intelligence missions against regional adversaries from their soil—the Pentagon finds its multi-billion-dollar installations functionally sidelined during critical military surges. Instead of providing seamless operational flexibility, these fixed, highly vulnerable outposts transform into costly “imperial entrapment” liabilities: requiring thousands of US troops, high-end missile defense batteries, and constant naval escort deployments simply to protect the bases themselves, rather than executing broader strategic objectives or enabling Washington’s long-sought pivot to the Indo-Pacific. With the conflict between the US and Iran reigniting, Trump is demanding that the Gulf states pay once again to protect the Strait of Hormuz—a vital transit route that never closed until the war was started by Trump, not Iran.
This strategic calculus becomes infinitely more complex when factoring in Israel’s role in the regional security outlook. In recent years, certain Gulf states—most notably the UAE—operated under the premise that normalization and closer security alignment with Israel via the Abraham Accords would yield a net security dividend. Yet, this belief was never shared across the Gulf; nations like Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia maintained a far more cautious, sceptical stance toward Tel Aviv. The outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Tehran on February 28 utterly shattered any illusion that an Israeli-linked security architecture could bring regional stability. Instead, it exposed deep internal fault lines among the entire region. Reaching a collective, long-term security understanding with Iran was already a formidable challenge; doing so now, in the wake of a devastating conflict that forced Gulf States into the crossfire, is immensely more complicated. Moving forward, no regional framework can hold if it relies on a anti-Tehran pact anchored in Washington and Tel Aviv while ignoring the permanent reality of Iranian geographic power.
Ultimately, the fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran exposes a fundamental reality that Washington and its regional allies can no longer ignore: the entire Middle Eastern security architecture must be fundamentally re-evaluated.
The core dilemma facing the region is that no collective security arrangement can ever be viable or effective if it seeks to exclude Iran—an indispensable, geographically permanent power armed with increasingly sophisticated offensive, defensive, and asymmetric capabilities.
Moving forward, any stable regional order must not only account for Tehran’s military leverage, but also accommodate its non-negotiable strategic demands. This includes addressing governance and transit rights over the vital Strait of Hormuz—through which one-fifth of global oil flows—and reaching a durable, pragmatic framework on its nuclear program. Regardless of the final outcome of ongoing US-Iran negotiations, the lesson for the Gulf is clear: true security cannot be built on an external garrison model that marginalizes the region’s principal indigenous power.
Intl shipping firms shun US-controlled Hormuz corridor over failure to protect vessels
The Cradle | July 16, 2026
International shipping companies are avoiding crossing the Strait of Hormuz through the US-controlled alternative corridor that runs along the Omani coastline due to fears of Iranian strikes, sources told Reuters on 16 July.
After a series of Iranian strikes on ships attempting to bypass the Iranian-designated shipping channels as mandated in the Iran–US memorandum of understanding (MoU), shipping companies are reassessing the safety and viability of US military escort through the strait.
“The US doesn’t seem to have any control over the situation,” one shipping source said, noting that their firm chose to avoid the strait altogether out of concern for crew safety as security conditions worsen.
“Iran’s continued ability to target ships sailing through the Omani route means the Trump administration’s proposed solution to keep ships moving is unlikely to work,” said Torbjorn Solvedt, principal West Asia analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft.
Following the resumption of US attacks on Iran and the reimposition of the US blockade on Iranian ports and shipping routes, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed to a near-complete halt.
Kpler data shows only seven vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on the first day of the renewed US naval blockade, down from 13 the previous day.
Just prior to the reimposition of the US blockade, Kpler reported 21 monitored transits through the Strait of Hormuz on 14 July, with vessels favoring the Iranian-approved route as the Omani corridor saw no crossings at all.
The firm also verified three additional attacks off Oman, bringing the confirmed toll to 56 incidents and 17 seafarer deaths.
More than 200 non-Iranian vessels applied for Iranian transit permits and insurance coverage in the three weeks between the signing of the Iran-US MoU and the resumption of the war, according to figures released by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) on Tuesday.
The authority approved 79 percent of requests, with tankers making up the largest share at 41 percent, and China and India each accounting for roughly a fifth of outbound destinations – figures that cover Iran-approved crossings only, excluding the US-escorted Omani route.
The Saudis Back Down
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | July 16, 2026
On Monday July 13, airstrikes hit the runway at Sanaa International Airport shortly after a Houthi delegation returned from the funeral in Iran for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yemen’s Defense Minister Gen. Taher al-Aqili said on X that the runway was struck to stop a plane carrying the Houthi delegation returning from Khamenei’s funeral. The IRG defense ministry said it had exhausted diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran and the Houthis to stay out of Yemeni airspace, that it would respond to hostile aircraft “by all available means,” and held Iran responsible.
However, Israel’s mouthpiece on Axios, Barak Ravid, citing two US officials, reported that Trump gave Saudi leader MBS his backing for the strike in a phone call last Friday — MBS asked for support for military action against the Houthis and received it. The White House declined to comment directly and the Saudi embassy didn’t respond.
The proximate cause is aviation, not ground war. About ten days ago a Mahan Air flight landed in Sanaa — the first Iran–Sanaa flights in over a decade — and picked up a Houthi delegation traveling to the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Saudi Arabia blocked subsequent flights, fearing they’d be used to move weapons or Iranian military advisers to the Houthis. (Note the airport itself has been largely destroyed and out of action since Israeli strikes in May.)
Following the Saudi Attack on Sanaa, the Houthis retaliated by firing ballistic missiles and drones at Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia’s southwestern Asir region — a mountainous area near the Yemeni border and a domestic summer destination. Saree claimed the strike. The Saudi-led coalition spokesman said air defenses “dealt with a threat from ballistic missiles” launched toward the southern region. No casualties reported.
This exchange marked the first Saudi Arabian attacks on the Houthis since the informal truce took effect in March 2022. I thought that the Saudis would retaliate on Tuesday or Wednesday for the Houthi strike on Monday … Thankfully, I was wrong. The Saudis did not follow up by launching new attacks at Houthi positions.
The Saudi attack was foolish and reckless. At present, the Saudis are able to export a bit of oil from Yanbu, a Saudi city that sits on the shores of the Red Sea. This attack on Yemen — albeit an airfield — carried the risk that the Houthis would attack the Saudi oil facility at Yanbu and close the Bab al Mandab Strait. Given the Saudi vulnerabilities if their operation in the Red Sea is suspended or closed, you would think that MBS government would be engaged in further confidence building exercises with Yemen. Nope!! The Saudis almost touched off a renewal of the war with the Houthis.
I don’t know who convinced MBS to put a full stop to further attacks on the Houthi-controlled portion of Yemen, but the Saudis have not attacked again. The Saudis are in no position financially to handle the simultaneous closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al Mandab strait. It appears that cooler heads in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia prevailed… for now at least.
Iran has no plans for negotiations, focused on defense: FM spokesman
Press TV – July 15, 2026
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman says the country has no plans to return to negotiations with the United States as long as Washington violates its commitments under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the two countries last month.
Esmaeil Baghaei said on Wednesday that Iran is currently focused on repelling and retaliating against US attacks on its territory.
“We currently have no plans for negotiations and are focused on defense,” Baghaei said in response to claims by the US that its ongoing attacks on Iran would force Tehran back to the negotiating table.
The spokesman said Iran no longer considers itself bound by the terms of the MoU signed with the United States on June 17, citing Washington’s repeated violations of its commitments under the agreement.
“An MoU is a set of mutual commitments, and in the event of a breach by the other party, we too will refrain from fulfilling our obligations; this is a principle, and this same path will be followed henceforth,” he said.
“The other party has engaged in bad faith and breach of promise (beginning) from the very first article (of the MoU).”
The diplomat said that everyone inside Iran is supporting the policy of standing up against the US and its bullying demands.
“… our armed forces will respond with full force to any aggressor. If they strike, they will be struck back,” he said.
The comments came amid ongoing US attacks on coastal areas in southern Iran, which Washington claims are carried out to weaken Iran’s ability to “target ships” in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has rejected the US accusations, saying responsibility for managing transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway in the Persian Gulf that is critical to global energy supplies, has been delegated to Iran under Article 5 of the 14-point MoU agreed between Tehran and Washington.
IRAN WAR REPERCUSSIONS, THE US WILL BE BLAMED /The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – July 14, 2026
Trump’s 3 failed options for reopening Strait of Hormuz: The Economist
Al Mayadeen | July 14, 2026
The memorandum of understanding that was meant to end the US war on Iran is unraveling, and Washington is left with the same three options it had before the deal existed, none of which reopens the Strait of Hormuz.
The Economist traces the collapse back to the MoU’s fifth paragraph, which commits Iran to “make arrangements” for safe passage of commercial vessels.
Washington reads this as an obligation to clear mines, while Tehran reads it as a right to administer traffic through the Strait. Washington has already revoked the sanctions waiver that let Iran sell oil, and Trump has said he will resume the naval blockade.
Option one: Continued limited attacks
The first path available to Washington is simply to keep doing what it has already been doing, attacking Iranian military sites and equipment on a limited basis. The Economist argues that this option has effectively already failed.
More than 300 such attacks over five nights have not shifted Iranian behavior in any meaningful way, and there is little reason to expect a sixth night, or a sixtieth, to succeed where the first fifty did not.
Part of the problem is geographic, as even if the US were able to bomb every coastal launcher Iran possesses, the country could keep firing on shipping from positions further inland, since many of its missiles and drones have ranges well beyond 1,000 kilometers.
Option two: Escalation
The second option is to escalate well beyond the current tit-for-tat, but The Economist notes that this path carries substantial risk without any assurance of a better outcome.
Attacking Iran’s core infrastructure directly would likely draw retaliation against Gulf states caught in the crossfire and could expose Washington to accusations of a war crime.
Deploying ground troops, meanwhile, is regarded as politically untenable in Washington under current conditions, making it a non-starter regardless of its theoretical military logic.
Trump has repeatedly floated occupying Kharg Island, the site of Iran’s main oil export terminal, but The Economist points out that this would do nothing to reopen Hormuz itself, since the island sits more than 600 kilometers from the strait.
Option three: Reimposing the blockade
The third option, reinstating the naval blockade, might look like the least disruptive choice, but The Economist argues it simply returns both sides to the standoff that existed before the MoU was signed, a staring contest over which side blinks first under economic pressure.
That earlier standoff is precisely what produced the interim deal now falling apart, which offers little confidence that repeating it would end differently.
There is also no guarantee Iran accepts a renewed blockade without retaliating against Gulf states this time around, and if it does escalate in response, Trump would be left choosing between all-out war and a retreat from his stated goals.
No outside help in sight
Britain and France have offered to help Oman clear mines from the strait, but Germany, Japan, Gulf states and China have all stayed on the sidelines, The Economist observes, leaving Washington with little meaningful outside support to draw on.
Tanker traffic through the strait has collapsed to its lowest level since May, and Brent crude has climbed roughly 20 percent since July 6, trading near $87 a barrel.
The Economist concludes that neither Washington nor Tehran has a military path to what it wants, claiming that the US cannot bomb the strait open, and Iran cannot profit while it stays shut, leaving the fragile MoU as the least bad option either side has left.
Omani FM says ‘gravest threat to Gulf security’ stems from Israel, not Iran
The Cradle | July 14, 2026
Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi said on 13 July that the most dangerous threats in the region come not from Iran but from Israel, while lambasting the “myth” of the policy of “containment” that has for years targeted the Islamic Republic.
“The gravest threats to Gulf security do not originate within the region itself. Rather, they stem from decisions taken outside it – above all, in Tel Aviv. That conclusion is now difficult to dispute,” the foreign minister wrote in an opinion piece released by Le Monde on Monday.
Al-Busaidi added that Tehran “did not constitute an existential threat.”
He criticized the expansion of the US military presence across the region, saying it did not provide protection or benefit the countries of the Gulf.
“The enormous military expenditures across the region, the expansion of US military bases in the Gulf, and the maintenance of an extensive US military presence – intended to provide protection from afar – were all built and sustained at tremendous cost, yet without providing any real benefit,” the top Omani diplomat went on to say.
He added that the latest war proved that the US, Israeli, and Arab “policy of containment was little more than a myth – a fact that is now acknowledged even by those who, until recently, believed that more than 45 years of costly containment represented a necessary evil.”
The minister emphasized that reaching an arrangement to secure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz was a “priority.”
He stressed the importance of Iran’s role in such an arrangement.
“The Gulf coastline is shared by eight states. Alongside Oman and its five partners in the GCC – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar – stand Iran and Iraq, both of which have, at different times, been subjected to containment policies and military intervention,” he wrote.
Al-Busaidi said these “eight states all have vital interests to protect and each bears responsibility, according to its capabilities and priorities, for safeguarding this shared strategic” waterway.
“For that reason, none of them can be excluded from any future regional security architecture. Every one of them must participate in designing it, implementing it, and sharing the responsibilities that come with it,” he added.
Al-Busaidi also said complex discussions on the matter were ongoing.
The US has backtracked on several clauses of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MoU) reached between Washington and Tehran, including joint Omani-Iranian management of Hormuz.
This week, US President Donald Trump declared Washington the “Guardian of the Strait.”
The Omani foreign minister’s article coincides with a major escalation between Washington and Tehran.
Iran launched numerous missile and drone operations on US assets in the Gulf over the past few days in response to a violent and deadly US campaign of strikes. Washington has not stopped attacking Iran, in violation of the MoU.
Trump has declared that the ceasefire is “over” and is vowing harsher attacks on Iran in the near future.
Early on Tuesday, Iranian drones and missiles targeted US bases and military infrastructure in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan.
A few days earlier, Tehran responded to US strikes with attacks on Washington’s assets in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, as well as Oman – which Tehran had largely refrained from targeting during the first 40 days of the war that began in February.
Iran has been holding direct talks with Oman on the future management of Hormuz, but recently condemned the activation of a US-Omani shipping corridor, calling it a violation of the MoU.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Monday that “our effort, in consultation with Oman, was to establish a mechanism to ensure the safe passage of ships,” adding that “because of [US] pressure exerted on Oman, this objective was not achieved.”
Earlier this year, Iran established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) as part of plans to oversee future management of the waterway.
“Before the recent provocative actions by US forces in the region, which led to the [renewed] closure of the Strait of Hormuz, more than 200 non-Iranian vessels coordinated with [Iran] during the three weeks following the signing of the MoU, and most of them received transit permits and insurance coverage,” the PGSA said on Tuesday.
TRUMP BLOCKS HORMUZ AGAIN /Prof Seyed Marandi Live from Tehran
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – July 13, 2026
Trump’s “Memorandum of Surrender”: The art of the deal meets the fact of defeat
By Junaid S. Ahmad | MEMO | July 13, 2026
Donald Trump is not negotiating with Iran. He is negotiating with the humiliation of having failed to break it.
Beneath the ceasefires, memoranda, podium theatrics and sanctimonious appeals to “stability” lies a fact Washington cannot admit: the United States entered this confrontation expecting submission and emerged confronting its own limits.
It wanted Iran isolated, disarmed and politically obedient. It wanted its deterrence shattered, its regional influence dismantled and its sovereignty reduced to a flag, an anthem and nothing more. It failed.
Iran endured the pressure, preserved its strategic leverage and forced the most powerful empire on earth to negotiate with the country it had promised to bring to its knees.
That is not an American victory. It is the management of an American defeat.
Real diplomacy begins when both sides recognize that the other possesses interests, rights, red lines and power. Trump’s version begins from imperial theology: Washington has interests; Israel has rights; everyone else has obligations.
American coercion is called deterrence. Israeli aggression is called self-defence. Iranian resistance is called escalation.
Sovereignty is sacred when invoked by an American client and intolerable when asserted by an American enemy.
This is the fraud now being sold as peace in the Gulf: a ceasefire presented as capitulation, an interim agreement marketed as surrender and a renewed campaign of pressure repackaged as de-escalation.
Trump did not win the confrontation. He failed to produce the result he promised. Iran was not bombed into obedience. Its government did not collapse. Its strategic position was not erased. Its enemies discovered, once again, that destruction is not control and military superiority is not political mastery.
For an empire addicted to command, the inability to compel surrender is defeat.
Trump’s response is therefore not to honor the agreement, but to hollow it out. Accept the document. Rewrite its meaning. Violate its logic. Impose new demands. Then accuse Iran of sabotaging peace. It is diplomacy by battering ram.
The Strait of Hormuz is where this revisionism becomes geography. The attempt to reroute shipping through Omani waters is not a neutral administrative adjustment. It is an effort to strip Iran of the leverage that forced Washington to negotiate at all.
“Freedom of navigation” is merely the varnish.
The real demand is that Iran tolerate a hostile military order on its doorstep, surrender its principal strategic pressure point and accept that its sovereignty exists only when it is politically useless.
Iran may possess rights, provided it never exercises them. It may retain leverage, provided Washington decides when it may be used. It may remain sovereign, provided it behaves as a subordinate. This is not peace. It is coercion translated into diplomatic jargon.
The method is familiar: provoke, retaliate, moralize, escalate. Strangle the adversary economically. Threaten it militarily. Exhaust it politically. Then present concessions extracted under duress as the triumph of moderation.
Washington calls this “managed escalation.” The phrase is obscene. There is nothing managed about pushing an entire region toward catastrophe and congratulating oneself for controlling the speed. Nor does the strategy stop at Hormuz.
In Lebanon, the American-Israeli project is to transform Israeli security doctrine into Lebanese national destiny: isolate Iran, constrain Hezbollah and call the resulting submission “sovereignty.”
In Syria, fragmentation remains useful because a sovereign, territorially coherent state would obstruct the endless manufacture of pressure points. A wounded country is easier to penetrate, divide and punish.
The region is never allowed to heal because its wounds remain profitable. Different countries. Different instruments. The same imperial objective: reverse the political reality produced by war and reconstruct the appearance of American-Israeli supremacy after its material limits have been exposed. Israel’s role is not secondary. It is central, relentless and poisonous.
Its political machinery in Washington treats any durable Iranian power as an intolerable violation of the regional hierarchy. It does not seek security in any reciprocal sense. It seeks permanent superiority: Iran contained, Lebanon vulnerable, Syria fractured and the Gulf militarized without end.
Restraint may occasionally serve American interests. Permanent confrontation serves the Israeli project.
Trump is the ideal salesman for this arrangement because his greatest political talent is not victory, but the theatrical conversion of failure into triumph.
He needs a camera, a slogan and a captive press corps. If the battlefield will not produce surrender, the press conference must counterfeit it. A document is signed. Trump declares victory. The media repeats the phrase. The coercion resumes. The performance becomes the policy.
But Iran has already achieved what Washington was determined to prevent: it survived, preserved deterrence and forced the empire to confront the limits of its power.
That is a strategic victory. Not because Iran escaped damage. Not because the confrontation was costless. But because the central American objective — submission — was denied.
Iran did not merely resist an attack. It exposed the distance between imperial spectacle and imperial capacity. It demonstrated that the United States and Israel can devastate, sanction and threaten, but cannot automatically dictate the political outcome. That is the defeat Trump is trying to disguise.
Tehran must therefore treat any agreement not as a gift from Washington, but as a battlefield whose terms remain contested. An agreement that binds only Iran while leaving the United States free to reinterpret, pressure and punish is not diplomacy. It is an ultimatum disguised as diplomacy.
Restraint without reciprocity is not prudence. It is permission. Permission to rewrite the terms. Permission to escalate without cost. Permission to demand surrender after promising peace.
The central question is not whether Trump can stage another ceremony. It is whether the United States can tear up every agreement that fails to produce obedience.
Peace cannot be built on coerced submission and renamed stability. Victory cannot be manufactured at a podium while the balance of power says otherwise.
Trump wants Iran to surrender the leverage that defeated his strategy so he can announce that he won. Iran’s task is to deny him the fiction. To preserve its rights, consolidate its gains and make clear that the empire’s declaration is not reality. It is merely an empire issuing orders to history — and discovering, once again, that history does not obey.
Trump painted US into a tinderbox
By Trita Parsi | Responsible Statecraft | July 13, 2026
For all practical purposes, the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of (Mis)Understanding is over. The dispute over how to manage the Strait of Hormuz in the interim has pushed the two sides back into open war. But to what end?
There is little reason to believe another round of fighting can alter the fundamentals enough to change the reality from which the two sides must ultimately negotiate. If they are fortunate, the MOU’s collapse may yield another round of talks in which the allure of reshaping facts on the ground through force has finally faded.
As I have written elsewhere, the dispute over the Strait turns, at least on the surface, on Paragraph 5 of the MOU: whether Iran is responsible for safe passage throughout the Strait for the duration of the agreement, or only for the waterway’s northern corridor.
Beneath the surface, however, lies a more fundamental strategic disagreement. Even before the MOU was signed, Tehran believed Washington’s objective was to establish a southern shipping corridor through Omani waters that would gradually erode Iran’s control over the Strait. Such a corridor would require Oman’s cooperation, which may explain why Trump at one point threatened to bomb Oman unless it abandoned its proposal for joint management of the Strait, with administrative fees collected by Muscat and Tehran.
The corridor would remain operational even if war resumed and Iran sought once again to close the Strait. From Tehran’s perspective, Washington used the MOU to strengthen this alternative route, and the U.S. military’s escort of commercial shipping without coordinating with Iran marked a significant step in that direction. If successful, the strategy would deprive Iran of its most important source of leverage — which is precisely why it appeals to Washington.
This is why Tehran has insisted that all ships transiting the Strait — regardless of the corridor they use — coordinate with Iran, consistent with its reading of Paragraph 5 of the MOU. Washington, by contrast, argues that the MOU merely assigns Iran responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of commercial vessels, without granting it operational control over all maritime traffic.
Before the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, the two sides explored a compromise under which ships would coordinate their transit with both Iran and a designated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state. As I wrote in my Substack, “Under such an arrangement, ships would notify Tehran while also reporting to a GCC maritime authority, balancing Iran’s demand for oversight with Washington’s desire to avoid granting Tehran exclusive control.” But no agreement was reached before diplomacy was suspended for the duration of the funeral.
Accounts of what transpired in Muscat over the weekend naturally differ, but three proposals emerged. Iran advanced a variation of the earlier compromise: a dual-notification system for all vessels transiting the Strait. Qatar proposed three channels—an Iranian corridor in the north, an Omani corridor in the south, and a neutral corridor in the middle. For Tehran, this was a nonstarter, as it would effectively restore the Strait to its pre-February status.
According to Tehran, the United States and Oman favored separate management of the Iranian and Omani corridors: Iran could require coordination for vessels using its corridor, while Oman’s would remain unrestricted.
Tehran saw this as an attempt to formalize what it had long suspected was Washington’s strategy: creating a southern corridor through the Strait beyond Iran’s influence, leaving Tehran no means of challenging it short of war with Oman. Iran also contends that Muscat advanced the proposal only under intense U.S. pressure, noting that Oman had previously supported a joint management system.
Washington disputes this account. U.S. officials maintain they were open to several arrangements, provided commercial vessels could transit the Strait safely. According to the American version, the talks unraveled only after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi consulted Tehran regarding a joint Iranian-Omani statement declaring the Strait open. From Washington’s perspective, negotiations had been progressing until Araghchi was overruled by hardliners in the IRGC, who chose confrontation over compromise.
Whether such a fracture proved decisive in this instance is unclear. What is clear is that the outlook of Iranian strategists has hardened markedly in recent weeks as they have become increasingly convinced that Trump intends to restart the war. Several developments have reinforced that belief. First, Trump’s rhetoric shifted dramatically: he called the Iranians “scum,” declared the ceasefire over, and said he might resume bombing to “finish the job.”
Second, as I argued here, Tehran believes Washington brokered the Lebanese-Israeli agreement — which contradicts the U.S.-Iran MOU by conditioning Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon on Hezbollah’s disarmament — to enable Israel to retain key positions that would weaken Hezbollah’s ability to support Iran in the next war.
Third, White House officials leaked the U.S. demand that Tehran declare the Strait open and, at least implicitly, accept responsibility for attacks on shipping. Rather than seeing the leak as political posturing to make Trump appear tough, Tehran increasingly viewed it as a deliberate attempt to derail the talks and steer the crisis back toward military confrontation.
Taken together, these developments convinced Tehran that Washington was preparing to resume the war. From that perspective, Iran’s best option was to close the Strait immediately. Rather than an attempt to extract additional concessions or an instance of overplaying its hand, Tehran’s decision appears to have been driven by the fear of losing its most important source of leverage before the next round of fighting.
In the view of Iranian decision-makers, closing the Strait would not trigger war because war was already coming. (If their assessment was incorrect, however, Tehran’s own actions have likely created a self-fulfilling prophecy by taking actions that made a military response from Washington next to inevitable).
Still, much indicates that another round of war will not fundamentally change realities on the ground or the balance between the US and Iran. Trump, in particular, does not have time on his side when taking into account both economic and political realities, and even some military factors.
By almost every meaningful measure, the global oil inventory position is materially weaker today than it was before the February war. Since the end of February, observed global oil inventories have fallen by roughly 360–370 million barrels, with only about 21 million barrels rebuilt after the U.S.–Iran MOU — recovering just 5% of the wartime draw.
More importantly, the apparent recovery reflects oil in transit rather than replenished storage: oil on water increased by 117 million barrels, while onshore inventories fell by 96 million barrels. OECD inventories declined by another 62 million barrels in June alone, including roughly 44 million barrels released from government emergency stocks.
The United States also enters any renewed conflict with a substantially smaller strategic cushion. It has fallen from about 415 million barrels before the war to roughly 337 million barrels, while commercial crude, gasoline and distillate inventories all remain below their five-year seasonal averages. Consequently, Washington has significantly less capacity than in February to absorb another major disruption to global oil flows.
In addition, the United States is now only four months away from the midterm elections, dramatically shortening Trump’s economic and political pain threshold. In February, the administration could plausibly argue that the oil shock was temporary and that prices would normalize before voters went to the polls. A renewed conflict today would push its most visible economic consequences directly into the campaign: higher gasoline prices, inflation, interest rates, and rising food, airline, freight, and utility costs.
As a Pentagon source told me last year, Iran builds missiles faster than the United States produces missile interceptors. And while Washington must divide its attention and resources among multiple theaters — from Ukraine to Taiwan — Iran has only one.
Thus, although the United States could, given enough time, degrade Iran’s ability to threaten shipping in the Persian Gulf, there is little reason to believe it could do so before the economic and political costs became prohibitive for Trump. It is essentially the same strategic reality he confronted in February. The difference is that he lacked the benefit of hindsight then. Now he has it — though it does not appear to have mattered.
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
US Reinstates Naval Blockade of Iran – Trump
Sputnik – 13.07.2026
WASHINGTON – The United States is reinstating the blockade of Iranian ports, US President Donald Trump said on Monday.
“The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Trump also said that the United States will become a “guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz and receive a reimbursement equal to 20% of cargo shipped through the waterway.
“All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
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Book Review
New book reveals how the Israel lobby destroyed US diplomacy with Iran
Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick Reveal How The Israel Lobby Paved The Way For A U.S. War On Iran
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 11, 2026
Investigative journalist Eli Clifton and political scientist Ian Lustick have released a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy titled “Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power”.
The book contains a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence over various U.S. administrations going back to its creation.
Among the book’s most interesting revelations is how the Israel Lobby pushed anti-Iran propaganda in the United States in order to destroy U.S. diplomacy with Iran. … continue
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