Arsenio Dominguez, head of the UN’s International Maritime Organization, said no state had a legal right to obstruct shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, sharpening international pressure over a waterway that has been largely paralysed six weeks into the US-Iran war. Speaking in London on Monday, the IMO chief tied the dispute to established maritime law as the United States moved ahead with a blockade of traffic linked to Iranian ports and coastal areas.
The intervention came at a moment of deep strain for global trade. The strait, one of the world’s most sensitive energy chokepoints, carries about a fifth of global oil and gas supplies. Reuters reported that the US military’s note to seafarers said vessels entering or leaving the blockaded area without authorisation could be intercepted, diverted or captured, while also stating that neutral transit to or from non-Iranian destinations would not be impeded. Even so, ship movements were disrupted immediately, with at least two tankers turning back as the blockade took effect.
Dominguez’s stance rested on the same legal principle the IMO had already invoked earlier in the week when it warned against proposals for tolls in Hormuz. The agency said international law does not allow coastal states to introduce charges for passage through international straits and that bordering states must not hamper or suspend transit passage. That position reflects the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which sets out that transit through straits used for international navigation cannot be suspended. The legal message from the maritime agency was clear: whether the obstacle takes the form of a blockade, a toll or some other restriction, freedom of navigation in such a corridor is not meant to be subject to unilateral control.
The immediate human cost is becoming harder to ignore. According to Reuters, Dominguez told reporters that about 20,000 seafarers and roughly 1,600 vessels were stuck in the Gulf, extending a traffic freeze that had already gripped the strait since the conflict began. In separate official remarks, he described the situation in the region as one of grave concern and urged states to back diplomatic efforts to evacuate stranded crews and establish humanitarian corridors. For shipping executives and insurers, the legal dispute is only part of the danger. Mines, war risk premiums, uncertainty over enforcement and the possibility of miscalculation at sea have all combined to deter normal commercial traffic.
The broader economic damage is widening beyond oil. A UN-backed diplomatic push is now under way to create a mechanism for safe fertiliser shipments through Hormuz, reflecting fears that the maritime standoff is hitting food production as well as energy markets. Reuters reported a more than 90% drop in tanker traffic, with shortages already affecting planting decisions in parts of Latin America and threatening yields in Africa and Asia. That has given the crisis a sharper humanitarian edge, shifting it from a regional security story into a global supply-chain emergency.
Regional governments are also signalling discomfort with any attempt to rewrite the rules of passage. Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said on Monday that neither Iran nor the United States should impose new regulations on transit through Hormuz and argued that the waterway should be reopened through diplomacy rather than force. His remarks captured a wider concern among governments that military solutions could deepen the conflict rather than restore confidence. Washington’s allies have shown little appetite for joining a direct enforcement mission, leaving the blockade politically exposed even as it is militarily in force.
