The Strait of Hormuz has become the place where Donald Trump’s brief diplomatic victory began to fall apart faster than it could be packaged as success. The deal meant to restore shipping and ease pressure on energy markets left the central question unresolved: who actually controls the route through which a major share of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas moves.
For two months, commercial tankers passed through the strait in a semi-covert naval arrangement. Ships turned off their transponders, American forces provided radio guidance, and traffic shifted closer to the Omani coast, away from Iran’s shore. The system helped revive movement after the first attacks and the threat of mines.
But that arrangement rested not on a durable agreement, but on a temporary mix of fear, American cover and Iranian calculation. Once Washington and Tehran tried to put the cease-fire into writing, weak language became a strategic problem. Iran saw the document as recognition of its role in Hormuz. The United States saw it as a mechanism for safe passage.
According to Daycom’s assessment, this difference in interpretation was the central flaw of Trump’s deal. It did not resolve the question of control over the strait. It postponed it, allowing both sides to declare victory. For energy markets, that was enough for a few weeks. For war, it was not.
Trump presented the June memorandum as the reopening of Hormuz. His political instinct was clear: high fuel prices, inflation pressure and fear of a prolonged war with Iran required a quick result. What he needed was not a perfect architecture of maritime security, but a signal that oil could flow again.
Tehran entered the talks with a different intention. For Iran, Hormuz is not only a maritime artery, but a lever of sovereign pressure. If a state can force ships to request permission, use a preferred route, pay fees or fear attack, it gains an instrument more powerful than a formal closure of the strait.
That is why the fifth paragraph of the memorandum became explosive. The phrase saying that Iran would “take all measures” to ensure the safe passage of commercial ships sounded to Washington like a guarantee. To Tehran, it became something close to official confirmation that safe passage could not exist without Iran.
Even more important was the final paragraph, which referred to future dialogue between Iran and Oman on the management and maritime services of the Strait of Hormuz, taking into account the sovereign rights of coastal states. In a diplomatic text, that may have looked balanced. In a real strait filled with missiles, boats and mines, such wording shifted the balance of interpretation.
Iran began insisting that ships use the northern route closer to its coast and obtain permission from a Tehran-created authority overseeing the strait. Formally, this was framed as a matter of security, environmental services and maritime traffic control. In practice, it was an attempt to establish Iran’s own regime of passage.
For shipping companies, this created a trap without good options. The southern route near Oman carries the risk of Iranian attack. The northern route through Iran’s zone carries the risk of fees, political dependence and de facto recognition of Tehran’s claims. Either way, freedom of navigation stops being normal practice and becomes a matter for negotiation.
That is exactly what followed the new Iranian strikes. The strait Trump had declared safe lost stability again. The number of ships fell sharply, energy prices rose, and fear of a return to full-scale war became a real factor for markets. Formally, Hormuz could still be open. In practice, it no longer felt open.
The American response was military. After attacks on ships and Iran’s statements about closing the waterway, the United States launched large strikes on Iranian military targets. One overnight salvo alone hit roughly 140 sites, while the total number of American strikes over the week reached into the hundreds. Washington was trying to show it would not allow Tehran to turn the strait into a private military-customs corridor.
But airstrikes do not remove the original mistake in the deal. They can destroy radars, launchers, depots, boats and drone facilities. They can punish Iran for attacks. But they do not erase the ambiguity in the document, restore shipowners’ confidence or automatically guarantee captains that their route will not become a target.
This is where the main limit of military power in Hormuz becomes visible. The United States outmatches Iran in aircraft, naval forces, intelligence and strike range. But Iran sits on the shore of the strait. Its geography, mobile systems, dispersed forces and willingness to take risks make a full military clearing of the waterway almost impossible without a major war.
Washington had already tried to act more forcefully. In early May, American forces sought to launch an escort operation that would reopen the strait after traffic had stalled. The initiative quickly ran into political limits: regional partners feared Iranian retaliation and did not want to become part of an open military push.
The United States then shifted to a subtler approach: radio coordination, routes near Oman, limited air cover and mine monitoring. More than 800 commercial vessels received guidance for passage through the southern corridor. Hundreds of millions of barrels of oil moved along that route, and for a short time it appeared that Washington had found a workable compromise.
In reality, this was not full security but managed risk. The American military could assist with routing, but it could not guarantee absolute protection. That distinction matters: in maritime trade, the gap between “assistance” and “guarantee” is measured in insurance rates, shipowner decisions and captains’ willingness to enter a dangerous zone.
Iran exploited precisely that gray area. It did not need a total daily blockade. A few attacks and declarations of control were enough to force the market to reprice risk. In that logic, a missile or drone becomes not only a weapon, but a signal to insurers, traders, ports, charter operators and governments.
The June deal had another weakness: it limited fees only temporarily, during the period of further negotiations. For Iran, that left a window for the future return of payments for passage. Tehran could wait for the period to expire, or use a new crisis to accelerate the imposition of its own rules.
Iran’s argument relies on the language of sovereignty. Tehran speaks of coastal waters, security, environmental protection and maritime services. But behind that legal shell stands a political goal: to turn an international corridor into a space where every participant in shipping must account for Iran’s will.
That runs against the logic under which Hormuz functioned for nearly six decades as a regulated but open route. After the international traffic scheme was created in 1968, Iran had repeated opportunities to challenge the regime but did not do so systematically for years. After the 1979 revolution, the new authorities said they did not consider themselves bound by old arrangements, but even then full control remained more a threat than a permanent practice.
War changed that. After American and Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran quickly moved to attacks on merchant vessels, the threat of mines and demands for payment for safe passage. At that moment, Hormuz ceased to be merely a route. It became a way to redistribute power after Iran came under military pressure.
For Trump, this created a political dilemma. He wanted to lower the cost of the war quickly without looking weak. The memorandum allowed him to declare success, but it did not establish a mechanism capable of surviving Iran’s first attempt to apply pressure. Now his own statement that the deal is “over” looks less like a demonstration of control than an admission that the document did not survive contact with reality.
The White House can argue that Iran knew about the southern route and accepted that ships there would not be attacked. But if that understanding was not clearly written down, it remained a political interpretation rather than an operational guarantee. In war, that difference is decisive: where a diplomat sees intention, a commander and an insurer look for an obligation.
The greatest danger now is that each side believes it has been deceived or justified. The United States sees Iranian attacks as a violation of the understanding. Iran sees American strikes as continued interference and a basis for controlling the strait. That is how a cease-fire becomes a legal fragment both sides use to justify renewed escalation.
For the global economy, this means the return of an old question in a new form: what cracks first — Iran’s economy under sanctions and strikes, or the global economy under energy risk. Iran is weaker than the United States, but its weakness does not cancel its ability to strike at a chokepoint in world trade.
That is why Hormuz remains an ideal tool of asymmetric coercion. Tehran does not need to defeat the U.S. Navy. It only needs to make passage unpredictable. It does not need to close every meter of water. It only needs tanker owners to calculate risk and price it into energy.
Trump’s deal failed not because a cease-fire was inherently wrong. It failed because it confused the temporary restoration of traffic with a political settlement over control. It gave markets a pause, but not shipping a security architecture. It gave Trump a headline, but it gave Iran room to interpret.
Now the United States is again striking Iran, Iran is again targeting shipping, and Hormuz is again setting the mood of energy markets. This is not merely the crisis of one memorandum. It is a reminder that a narrow strait can destroy a large political construction if ambiguity is built into its foundation.
Trump wanted to reopen Hormuz quickly. Iran wanted to turn that reopening into recognition of its control. In the end, the strait remained open only to the degree that fear allowed. And in the global economy, fear can sometimes act more powerfully than an official closure.
