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The US is reported to be greatly expanding the scope of its naval blockade of Iran, asserting the right to board and seize any ships it believes to be carrying “contraband” or “conditional contraband” bound for Iran from anywhere on the open seas. Respected maritime news and intelligence agency, Lloyd’s List, says this means that “almost any industrial cargo bound for Iran could plausibly be intercepted”. This will considerably raise the stakes in an already fraught situation.
Opinions are already divided as to how effective this “blockade of a blockade” is likely to be. The US president made the decision on April 12 to “seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.” The intention was to make clear to Tehran that they were ultimately not in control of the strait and certainly wouldn’t be allowed to profit by imposing a charge on ships it allowed to pass through.
The problem for the US is that traffic through the strait remains largely at a standstill. Reuters’ live tracker of traffic in the strait suggests a considerable gathering of vessels on either side of the waterway, with very little evidence of ships actually transiting the strait.
It is, writes maritime strategy expert Basil Germond, of Lancaster University, a question of who can withstand more pain from the economic fallout. So the US plan to seek and seize ships wherever they are on suspicion of carrying almost any sort of industrial cargo is clearly aimed at increasing that pain for Iran.
Read more:
US naval blockade of Strait of Hormuz: what it involves and the risks attached
But one of the dangers is how far and how fast the situation might escalate. There was a fraught moment on April 14 when it appeared as if a Chinese-linked tanker had transited the strait. The Rich Starry, registered in landlocked Malawi, is Chinese owned and crewed. Would the US try to board the boat? How would China react if it did?
China buys about 90% of Iranian oil and is one of the few countries whose tankers were getting in and out of Iranian ports unchallenged, writes Tom Harper, an expert in Xino-US relations at the University of East London. US seizure of any Chinese tankers would be bound to considerably ratchet up tensions between the two superpowers.
As it turned out, the Rich Starry turned back in the Gulf of Oman and re-entered the strait without being stopped or challenged by the US. But the new US operating instructions could well make a confrontation more likely. Harper explores the implications of the US-Iran conflict for relations between Washington and Beijing in the run-up to Donald Trump’s planned state visit to the Chinese capital next month.
Read more:
US blockade of Strait of Hormuz ratchets up tensions with China ahead of Trump visit to Beijing
Meanwhile the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon continues unabated. Ambassadors from the two countries met in Washington this week, where they resolved to hold direct, high-level talks. The US president has said that the leadership of the two countries would also speak, “for the first time in 34 years”, but the office of Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun denied any knowledge of the arrangement, saying that a ceasefire would need to be in place before any talks could take place.
Whether the US president has the leverage over Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to make that happen is another matter. The US and Israel certainly have one of the strongest partnerships of any two countries, write Bamo Nouri and Inderjeet Parmar of City St George’s, University of London. The US was the first country to formally recognise the state of Israel in 1948 and Washington has since provided the Jewish state with more than US$300 billion (£220 billion).
Wars against Soviet-aligned Arab states in the 1970s showed how Israel could be an important cold war bulwark against the spread of communism in the Middle East.
Israel’s influence in the US is often put down to the strength of the Jewish lobby there. But it is the perceived strategic value of the relationship, Nouri and Parmar believe, that is the key factor: “When core US strategic interests have been at stake, US policy has overridden lobbying pressure”.
Read more:
Why the US and Israel’s alliance endures – even when it strains
A reset for Hungary-EU relations?
To Hungary, where the 16-year prime ministership of Viktor Orbán came to a close in a landslide election on April 12. The two-thirds majority won by Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar, gives the incoming PM the power – if he so chooses – to reverse some of the more illiberal measures implemented by the authoritarian Orbán.
It was a resounding victory: 138 seats to Magyar’s Tisza party to just 55 for Orbán’s Fidesz. All the more remarkable when you consider how the comprehensive state capture of Hungary’s media over Orbán’s tenure and the ferocious propaganda campaign the outgoing prime minister waged, using every organ of state to boost his chances.
Alexander Bor, an expert in propaganda and election manipulation at Central European University, explains that Orbán’s campaign hit two snags: the people’s disillusionment at Hungary’s parlous economy and a well-run campaign by a credible challenger in Magyar.
Read more:
Viktor Orbán’s election loss shows the limits of his propaganda machine
Magyar’s victory went down well in Brussels, writes Michael Toomey, an expert in EU democracy at the University of Glasgow. Orbán’s warm relationship with Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was no secret. He did all he could to block EU aid packages for the defence of Ukraine and at one point was even revealed to be passing on information from closed EU ministerial meetings with his Russian friends.
“Had Orbán managed to prevail in the recent elections, the relationship between the EU and Hungary is likely to have reached a breaking point”, Toomey concludes.
Read more:
Orbán’s downfall is a positive for EU-Hungary relations – but the reset will not be smooth
Trump vs Pope Leo
One relationship which appears to be under a degree of strain is that between the US president and Pope Leo XIV. Leo, the first pope born in the US, has been a highly visible and vehement opponent of the US war with Iran, calling for peace and condemning “those who wage war”, whose hands he said, quoting scripture, “are full of blood”.
Trump replied, not quoting scripture, that the pope was “weak on crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy,” adding that he was only elected to the papacy because he is American and the Catholic church “thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”
Massimo D’Angelo, an expert in the Catholic church’s diplomacy, explains why the US president is likely to come off worse in this particular contretemps.
Read more:
‘I’m not a politician’: why the clash with Pope Leo could prove dangerous for Donald Trump
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