Closure of Hormuz Strait not a choice but a necessity
Closure of Hormuz Strait not a choice, but a necessity
TEHRAN - When a country sees that it is being deceived despite showing goodwill and practicing patience for long years in the face of injustices and deceptions, it may resort to acts that do not seem legal at first glance. These things happen when a country is left with no other alternative.
Before the United States and Israel started this new wave of war against Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran had threatened that if it will close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global energy passes, to penalize the United States which has started an unprovoked war on Iran along with the criminal Israeli regime.
It may be said that many countries that suffer from the closure of this strategic waterway have no role in this war. But think of Iran which has come under an illegal attack by another country which is about 7,000 miles (more 11,000 kilometers) away from the Persian Gulf.
Iran had been showing patience for a decade not to unsettle the energy market. But there was no limit for Washington’s illegal moves.
All U.S. moves against Iran, from economic sanctions to the June 2025 war have been illegal. But the current extremely dangerous war that it started against Iran along with Israel is an open violation of international law and the UN Charter.
Immediately after Iran struck a nuclear deal with the U.S. and five other countries, including France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia in July 2015, Donald Trump, who was campaigning for presidential election in 2016, said he will tear up the multilateral agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), if he is elected president.
He won the election and unilaterally abrogated the nuclear agreement in May 2018, which had been endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231. Trump did this despite warnings even by some of officials within his administration, including his defense secretary James Mattis.
Trump rescinded this historic agreement that was achieved after 12 years of negotiations, including two years of it intensive talks. When the agreement was signed, the people of Iran breathed a sigh of relief. However, this reckless and mindless president turned people’s hope into disappointment. Inflation started rising in Iran immediately after he won the election in November 2016.
In July 2015, when the multilateral agreement was signed, economic and commercial delegates from many countries were travelling to Iran to assess the situation for investment and economic cooperation. However, Trump frightened all potential investors from the Iranian market and threatened to penalize any country that entered business with Iran. After he was inaugurated as president in January 2017, he introduced his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran and announced his administration wants to zero in Iran’s oil export.
However, to prove its goodwill, Iran remained loyal to its JCPOA commitments for an entire year (until May 2019). After a year Iran announced that its “strategic patience” has ended. Again, Iran announced if the European parties to the deal honor their commitments it will reverse its decision. Yet, Iran’s goodwill went unnoticed.
Bibi Netanyahu, who was prime minister in Israel before and after the deal, along with Saudi and UEA acted as catalysts in prompting Trump to abandon the nuclear deal. This enmity to the deal and Iran was so high that Iran’s then foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif classified Bibi Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) of the UAE along with John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor at the time, as B-4 group who were encouraging Trump to attack Iran.
Trump reentered the White House in January 2025 under the campaign of “America First”. It was expected that he had gained experience in his first presidency and will act a little bit shrewdly. However, this assumption proved astoundingly wrong and he appeared more thoughtless to the extent that he threatened that the U.S. will annex Greenland by force if necessary and called Canada a U.S. state. These rash statements rattled the Europeans and Canadians.
Political philosopher Arshin Adib-Moghadam was quite right who said during Trump’s first term that he was the “most dangerous person” since the Second World War.
Now, Iran is dealing with two evil persons: Bibi Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza; and Donald Trump as a liar-in-chief and great cheater who is pushing the Middle East and maybe the larger world toward anarchy.
In his first term, Trump tried to strangulate Iran economically. This term, he was not satisfied with economic strangulation and started a shocking war against Iran.
His economic war on Iran which started during his first presidency has cost Iran hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues and caused a steep rise in price of commodities and a sharp fall in the value of national currency. It was mostly because of the Trump-led sanctions that a considerable of number of Iranians poured into the streets in January to show their complaints about economic instability. However, the U.S. president abused the economic discontent within Iran by provoking peaceful protestors to take over state institutions by saying that “help is on the way” and this caused the protests take a violent course that regrettably led to the death of more than 3,000 people across the country.
Facing an economic war and now an imposed war, Iran felt no remaining option and unwillingly decided to close the Strait of Hormuz. Undoubtedly, this move will make other countries, and even Iranian friends, unhappy. But what else could Iran do? Trump wanted Iranians to surrender, but this is something that Iranians will never do.
Even now Iran has warned oil tankers to avoid passing the strait otherwise they will come under fire. So far, only a few tankers that have ignored the warnings by Iran have been set ablaze.
Now, Trump, who suffers from miscalculation and misreading of Iran’s defense doctrine, must realize that his unwarranted and unlawful war on Iran will bring about economic costs for the U.S., his so-called allies and UNFOTUNATLY for some other countries.
Now the Americans and the people in the world are realizing that a president who came to power on the campaign of “America First” and had shunned “endless wars” in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, he himself has triggered a much more dangerous war in the Middle East to just please the Zionists.
The more the Trump administration continues the war on Iran, the more the global energy market will come under pressure. Now, independent-minded people in the world must make judgements.
source: tehrantimes.com