Iran has created a new government agency to control who passes through the Strait of Hormuz and how much they pay to do it, a move that maritime law experts say violates international law and that has piled fresh anxiety onto a global shipping crisis already choking hundreds of commercial vessels inside the Persian Gulf.
The agency, called the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, was identified Thursday by shipping data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence, which said the body was positioning itself as the sole authority with power to grant transit permission through the waterway. Lloyd’s said the authority had already sent it an application form for vessels seeking passage — a bureaucratic formalization of a chokehold that Iran has been tightening since the war with the United States and Israel began Feb. 28.
The move came the same day Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar spoke by phone with Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi, and Pakistani officials expressed optimism — cautious but notable — that a peace deal between Tehran and Washington was drawing closer.
“We expect an agreement sooner rather than later,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said Thursday. “We hope the parties will reach a peaceful and sustainable solution that will contribute not only to peace in our region but to international peace as well.”
He declined to give a timeline.
The Strait as a Revenue Stream
Iran has effectively sealed the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, while the United States has blockaded Iranian ports from the other direction. The result is a commercial standstill that has sent fuel prices climbing and rattled economies far beyond the Persian Gulf. Hundreds of ships sit bottled up in the Gulf with no clear path to open water.
The new Persian Gulf Strait Authority formalizes what had been an unofficial and opaque arrangement. Under the existing system, Iran had been vetting certain vessels and, for at least some of them, collecting a tax on their cargo before allowing passage through the strait’s northern waters near the Iranian coastline. The new agency gives that practice an institutional name and a paper trail.
Maritime law experts were direct about what that means legally. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea requires countries to permit peaceful passage through their territorial waters. Iran’s demand to approve and tax commercial vessels crosses that line, they said. The U.S. and its Gulf allies are pushing the U.N. Security Council for a resolution condemning Iran’s grip on the strait and threatening sanctions. A previous resolution calling for reopening the waterway was vetoed by Russia and China, Iran’s two most significant diplomatic shields.
Mixed Signals From Washington
The Trump administration has not projected a consistent message about how it intends to end the conflict. A fragile ceasefire has largely held since April 8. Previous declarations that military operations were finished gave way to fresh threats of bombing if Tehran rejected terms allowing oil and gas shipments to resume. Trump then launched “Project Freedom,” a military effort to force a shipping corridor through the strait — and suspended it after two days.
Only two American-flagged merchant ships are confirmed to have passed through the U.S.-guarded route during the operation. The U.S. military said it sank six Iranian small boats that threatened civilian vessels during the attempt. Trump said he paused the effort to allow more time for a peace agreement to take shape.
A Saudi official told the Associated Press on Thursday that Riyadh had not been consulted before Trump launched the strait-opening operation and had explicitly refused to participate.
“We told them that we are not part of this and that they can’t use our territories and bases for this,” the official said, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Saudi Arabia also conveyed a message directly to Iran that the kingdom would play no role in any U.S. military action tied to reopening the strait.
The revelation that one of Washington’s most important regional partners actively distanced itself from the operation before it began adds another dimension to why Project Freedom produced limited results and was suspended so quickly.
Iran Reviews the U.S. Proposal
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Thursday that Tehran was reviewing messages relayed through Pakistan — the designated intermediary in the peace negotiations — but had not yet reached a conclusion or sent a response to the U.S. side, Iranian state television reported.
Late Thursday, semiofficial Iranian news agencies Fars and Tasnim reported that explosions were heard in southern Iran near Bandar Abbas. Neither agency identified the source of the blasts, and no further details were immediately confirmed.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian added an unusual detail to the picture of Iran’s internal deliberations on Thursday, disclosing that he had met recently for more than two hours with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Pezeshkian praised Khamenei’s conduct in the meeting during remarks aired on Iranian state television.
Khamenei, who replaced his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after the elder was killed in the war’s opening strikes, has not appeared in public since being wounded early in the conflict. He has communicated exclusively through written statements since being named supreme leader in March. Iranian officials have said he is playing a central role in overseeing the negotiations with Washington, though his precise location and condition remain undisclosed.
The Vatican and the Pope
Across the Atlantic, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Thursday with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican to discuss Middle East peace efforts. The meeting carried its own diplomatic undertone: Pope Leo XIV has been openly critical of the Iran war, a position that has led to direct friction with President Trump.
Lebanon Talks Set for Washington
In a separate development, direct talks between Israel and Lebanon are scheduled to resume in Washington on May 14 and 15, a U.S. official confirmed Thursday, speaking anonymously to discuss plans for the closed-door sessions.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in televised remarks, said Islamabad was in continuous contact with both Iran and the United States around the clock to stop the war and extend the ceasefire.
“Day and night,” Sharif said.
The creation of the Persian Gulf Strait Authority is Iran doing something subtle and consequential at the same time. By establishing a formal government agency with application forms, fee structures, and an institutional name, Tehran is not just controlling the strait — it is asserting permanent sovereign jurisdiction over it in a way that outlasts any individual military confrontation.
This matters because ceasefires end and wars eventually stop, but agencies persist. If the Persian Gulf Strait Authority is still functioning when a peace agreement is eventually signed, Iran will be in a position to argue that its authority over shipping is an established administrative fact rather than a wartime imposition. Dismantling that claim later becomes harder the longer the agency operates and the more vessels submit applications to it.
Maritime law says Iran cannot do this. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea is explicit. But international law without enforcement is a strongly worded document, and Russia and China have already vetoed one Security Council resolution on the strait. The practical question is not whether Iran has the legal right — it does not — but whether any external power is willing and able to make the legal reality stick against Iran’s physical control of the waterway.
Saudi Arabia’s refusal to back Project Freedom is a significant piece of that puzzle. If the United States cannot use Saudi territory and bases for a strait-reopening operation, its military options narrow considerably. The Gulf states have their own calculus — they live next to Iran, and they will be there long after any American administration has moved on to other priorities.
The peace talks through Pakistan remain the most plausible exit from the stalemate. But Iran reviewing a proposal and Iran accepting one are different things, and the gap between the two has a way of widening whenever the pressure momentarily eases.
The Associated Press original
