The United States and its partners must defeat the long-term Iranian threat to international shipping as part of any ending of the current war. Iranian leaders are claiming sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and seeking permanent control of maritime traffic through it. This demand marks a significant expansion of Iranian war aims beyond just survival and denying the United States and its partners the accomplishment of their own objectives. Iran is now positioning itself to emerge from the war in a stronger strategic position, with veto power over who can access one of the most critical maritime chokepoints in the world. This arrangement would severely undermine the US position in the Middle East and jeopardize the security of US allies and partners globally, including those in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

Iranian officials and state media have repeatedly stated in recent weeks that they seek permanent control of the Strait of Hormuz and that they regard the strait as sovereign Iranian waters.[1] They claim that they will continue to regulate and tax traffic through it.[2] They have described this “new management” of the strait as leverage to fine and impose costs on those involved in the war against Iran, especially the Gulf states.[3] The newly selected Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, previewed this position in his first official statement: “We will seek reparations from the enemy, and if they refuse, we will take as much of their assets as we see fit, and if that is not possible, we will destroy that many of their assets.”[4] His official Telegram account has since published content describing how Iran can wield control of the strait to coerce and extort others and catalyze a new regional and global order.[5]

Iran is trying to cement its control of the Strait of Hormuz by pressing international parties to acquiesce, explicitly or implicitly. Recent Iranian proposals to end the war have required that the United States acknowledge Iranian control of the strait and recognize the Iranian right to regulate and tax commercial traffic there.[6] Iran also recently established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority to extract payments from transiting merchant vessels—apparently meant to mimic legitimate administrative mechanisms such as the Panama Canal Authority.[7] The crucial difference is that Tehran does not, in fact, hold sovereignty over the entire Strait of Hormuz despite the assertions of Iranian leaders. Iran could achieve de-facto control of the strait, however, if the United States recognizes its claims or if international shipping entities comply at scale.

Recognition is the linchpin of the Iranian effort to control the Strait of Hormuz. Without it, Iran must continue firing missiles and drones at commercial vessels or seizing them to enforce its claims. Such attacks would be clear and obvious acts of aggression that would risk escalation and further cast Iran as the aggressor. Recognition would instead grant Tehran some legitimacy to intercept ships in purported “Iranian waters” and frame any foreign interference as a violation of Iranian territorial integrity.

Control of the Strait of Hormuz would give Iran extraordinary leverage over the Persian Gulf and support its pursuit of other strategic objectives. Iran could coerce Gulf states by threatening to bar their access if they continue cooperating with the United States and Israel or even with one another in any fashion that Tehran deems hostile. That risk is especially pronounced given that the war has demonstrated to Iranian leaders how potent the strait is as coercive leverage. Iranian leaders have likewise discussed using the strait to circumvent international sanctions; the regime now requires commercial vessels to pay transit tolls in Iranian currency and through Iranian banks, in violation of sanctions against Tehran.[8] Iranian control of the strait would not only undermine the US position in the Middle East but would also impair any effort to contain Iran through any regional partner coalition and sanctions.

The threat extends beyond the Middle East as well. Normalizing this blatant violation of international maritime law threatens to upend global norms and set an extremely dangerous precedent. It risks emboldening other aggressive actors, such as the People’s Republic of China, to assert similar claims over key chokepoints and impose their own rules and restrictions, especially against the United States and its partners.

Washington and its friends—from Europe to the Indo-Pacific—have a vital interest in securing the Strait of Hormuz and preventing Iran from holding hostage a critical artery of global trade. This reality holds regardless of how one feels about the war or the wisdom of launching it in the first place. The vital national interests of the United States and all its allies and partners, and of many neutral countries as well, require making securing full freedom of navigation through the strait a non-negotiable condition for ending the current war.