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The sea cannot be held hostage
This article is authored by Dr Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Padma Shri awardee and chairman, Sun Foundation.
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Seven months after American and Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. An April ceasefire raised hopes, and a June Memorandum of Understanding raised them further. Both collapsed: The MoU broke down amid renewed fighting in July and formally expired in August. Now the two sides are trading limited strikes in what analysts call a "war of attrition". What began as a confrontation between two capitals has become a siege of the global commons.
The language of the siege is blunt. Iran's Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has warned: "In a region where Iran cannot sell oil, no one else will sell oil either." Washington, for its part, has kept around 20 warships on station to blockade Iranian ports, turning away hundreds of commercial vessels. So there are two blockades, and one set of victims: The bystanders.
Look at the Gulf. Qatar, among the richest nations on earth, shipped just 18 LNG cargoes in the first six months of the war, against 509 in the same period a year earlier. Kuwait's crude output fell from 2.6 million barrels a day to 5,73,000 in May, because its storage was full. Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain have no route to the open sea except through Hormuz. Saudi Arabia diverted oil to its Red Sea port of Yanbu, but in September attacks shut the East-West pipeline. Meanwhile the Houthis captured Mocha and pushed toward the Bab el-Mandeb, putting at risk the Red Sea lifeline that Jordan's Aqaba and Egypt's Suez Canal depend on. However rich a country is, oil that cannot be shipped is only inventory.
Can one state close the sea to all?
This raises the central question: Can any nation or nations however aggrieved, hold a strait hostage to disrupt supply chain for food, fuel & fertilisers affecting millions of people raising challenges of food security for humanity? International law has a clear answer, and it is older than this war. In the Corfu Channel case of 1949, the very first judgment of the International Court of Justice, the Court held that states cannot obstruct peaceful passage through straits used for international navigation. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea went further: Transit passage through such straits "shall not be suspended". Iran has never ratified the Convention, but the principle does not rest on a signature. As the IMO Secretary-General told the Security Council, there is "no legal basis to introduce payments or tolls or discriminatory conditions on international straits". Security Council Resolution 2817, adopted in March, affirmed exactly these navigational rights.
History also warns against treating the sea as a weapon. During the Iran-Iraq "Tanker War" of the 1980s, more than 400 merchant ships were attacked. Neither side won the war that way. The world responded with Security Council Resolution 552 of 1984, the very resolution recalled in this year's Resolution 2817, and the war ended through diplomacy, not through the strangling of trade. A second lesson comes from Suez. When the canal closed in 1967, fifteen merchant ships were trapped in the Great Bitter Lake for eight years. Closures have a way of outlasting the quarrels that cause them.
The costs are not abstract. Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of global oil trade and nearly a third of internationally traded fertilisers. The FAO warns that this is "not a temporary shipping disruption but the beginning of a systemic agrifood shock", with a possible global food-price crisis within six to twelve months. The poorest farmers in Africa and South Asia will pay for a dispute they had no part in. More than 20,000 seafarers have been stranded at sea.
India's own ledger is heavy. At least ten Indian sailors had been killed by July. Three of them died when US missiles struck the tanker MT Settebello, and others in attacks Washington blamed on Iran. On 23 September, a torpedo attack on the bulk carrier Cape Dao killed wiper Suraj Yadav. When fire from both sides kills our citizens, we cannot pretend this is someone else's war.
The fiscal toll is just as stark. The fertiliser ministry has sought to double this year's subsidy from the budgeted ₹1.71 lakh crore to ₹3.4 lakh crore. Oil marketing companies are losing about ₹530 crore a day, with negative margins of ₹8 a litre on petrol, ₹9 on diesel and ₹300 on every domestic LPG cylinder. The rupee has crossed 96 to the dollar, after a record low of 96.96 in May. India's crude import bill for April-August rose 48%, to $74.8 billion, on almost unchanged volumes. Nine million Indians live in the Gulf, and nearly $50 billion in remittances is at risk. Every barrel stuck behind the strait becomes a tax on the Indian farmer, commuter and household.
The countries that suffer most have the least say. Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and India are not parties to the US-Iran quarrel, yet they bear its costs. The time has come for them to stop being collateral and to speak with one voice. India should propose a Joint Maritime Task Force of affected nations, open to major importers such as Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh, with three tasks.
First, a humanitarian maritime corridor for food, fertiliser, medicines, civilian fuel and the evacuation of crews. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative shows it can be done: With UN and Turkish mediation, warring Russia and Ukraine agreed to a Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul that moved nearly 33 million tonnes of food during a war. Oman, which has jointly operated the Hormuz traffic scheme with Iran since 1968, is a natural co-chair.
Second, a neutral inspection mechanism to replace interdiction. It would reassure Washington that the corridor is not a sanctions loophole and reassure Tehran that it is not a military channel. Third, a single collective message to both capitals: Separate navigation from negotiation.
India is uniquely placed. As BRICS chair, New Delhi did what months of diplomacy had not: It brought Iran and the UAE to sign a single declaration. That declaration was the bloc's first consensus text on West Asia. It calls for "maximum restraint" and for working together "to maintain smooth flow of global trade, supply chains and energy". External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has put it plainly: "Pressure" cannot "replace diplomacy". India also speaks from experience. After Pahalgam, Operation Sindoor was, in India's words, "focused, measured and non-escalatory". India answered grave provocation without closing a single sea lane or holding a third country hostage. A nation that practised restraint under provocation has earned the standing to ask it of others.
To Washington and Tehran, the message must be respectful but firm. Settle your grievances, accusations and counter-accusations at the table, through Oman, Qatar, Pakistan or the United Nations. But lift the blockades now, without conditions. The seas belong to all of humanity, not to the party that can do the most damage on them. As the UN Secretary-General pleaded: "Let ships pass. Let the global economy breathe."
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Dr Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Padma Shri awardee and chairman, Sun Foundation.
