A new US-Iran war would end where the last one did
The fundamentals won't change: Iran can threaten
Hormuz, the United States can punish Iran, and neither can secure its
objectives through force.
Trita Parsi
Jul 13, 2026
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-mou-hormuz
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.
