The bombs are still dropping in the Middle East, and the world is looking for an exit ramp that does not exist. Right now, United States aircraft are striking targets across Iran for a seventh consecutive night. Blackouts are rolling through Sirik and Ahvaz while smoke rises from the port of Chabahar. Amid this chaos, a London-based think tank has put forward a supposedly brilliant solution. They call it a shared pact among Gulf states, modeled after the European Coal and Steel Community that bound Germany and France together after World War II.
It sounds lovely on paper. Put Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and America into a room, force them to co-manage the Strait of Hormuz, and watch the geopolitical tension melt away.
It will not work. In fact, it is a dangerous misreading of why this war started in the first place.
The idea that you can resolve the Strait of Hormuz crisis by treating it as a resource-sharing problem ignores the raw desire for hegemony driving the conflict. Iran does not want to share the waterway. They want to own it. Pretending otherwise is exactly how the international community ended up in this current mess.
The European Model Floated for the Middle East
The core of the proposed shared pact relies on historical nostalgia. Analysts point to 1951, when European nations pooled their coal and steel production so neither side could secretly build weapons of war. The theory goes that if the Gulf states jointly manage maritime security and shipping fees in the strait, the incentive for conflict vanishes.
But Europe was exhausted, broken, and occupied by foreign superpowers when it signed that deal. The Persian Gulf in 2026 is a completely different beast.
Right now, 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas and oil passes through that narrow chokepoint. It is not a stagnant pool of resources to be managed by a friendly committee. It is a chokehold.
For decades, Tehran has used the threat of closing the strait as its ultimate shield against Western pressure. Giving up unilateral control over the waterway means giving up the only real leverage the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps holds against a hostile Washington. They will never hand over the keys to a joint council where America’s Arab allies hold a majority vote.
The Real Failure of the June Ceasefire
Look at what happened just last month to see why cooperation fails here. In June 2026, a highly praised memorandum of understanding supposedly ended the active phase of the war. It took months of back-channel negotiations to secure that truce. Ships were supposed to pass freely.
The peace lasted less than thirty days.
Iran immediately began interpreting the agreement as a green light to enforce its own sovereignty over the shipping lanes. They demanded that commercial vessels follow strict, pre-approved Iranian routes and pay transit protocols. When three commercial vessels ignored those orders and bypassed the routes on July 6, Iranian forces opened fire.
The truce died instantly. US President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire over, and the bombing campaign resumed with a vengeance.
You cannot build a shared regional pact when the fundamental definition of safe passage is entirely up for debate. One side views freedom of navigation as an absolute international right. The other views it as an infringement on their home waters.
Why a Shared Pact Breaks Down in the Persian Gulf
If you sit down with maritime strategists who actually operate in Bahrain or Dubai, they will tell you the real problem with a joint pact. Trust is dead. You cannot build a shared security architecture when one of the members is actively trying to cripple the infrastructure of the others.
Just days ago, an Iranian strike damaged a massive desalination plant in Kuwait. In a region with almost no fresh water, attacking a desalination plant is not a minor border skirmish. It is an existential threat to millions of civilians.
Consider the current state of regional alignment:
- Saudi Arabia and the UAE have spent billions upgrading pipelines to bypass the strait entirely. They want to cut Hormuz out of their economic equation, not bind themselves to it forever.
- The Smaller Gulf States like Kuwait and Qatar are trapped in the middle, terrified of crossfire but reliant on Western naval escorts.
- Iran sees any joint pact involving Western-aligned states as a Trojan horse designed to permanentize the American military presence on its doorstep.
A shared pact requires a baseline of shared objectives. Right now, the only thing these states share is mutual suspicion and a front-row seat to an aerial bombardment.
Money and Missiles in the Strait
The crisis took a bizarre economic turn last week when President Trump floated a proposal to charge a 20% escort fee on all cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz to fund the US naval presence. The international community recoiled. The International Maritime Organization called it illegal, and allies like the United Kingdom and Australia flatly rejected the concept.
Trump backed away from the idea within hours, but the damage was already done.
Tehran seized on the statements instantly. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi argued that if Washington believes securing the strait justifies charging a fee, then Iran has the right to collect toll revenue as the primary geographic guardian of the waterway.
This completely undercuts the idealistic vision of a shared pact. The moment the strait is viewed as a commercial cash cow rather than a global common, it becomes a prize to fight over. If a joint council were formed today, the arguments over who gets what percentage of transit fees would trigger a diplomatic war before the first meeting even adjourned.
What Happens Next on the Water
The idealists writing policy papers in London need to look at the tactical reality inside the Persian Gulf. Commercial shipping has ground to a halt. Shippers are turning off their transponders and running blind through the dark, or they are dropping anchor in the Gulf of Oman and refusing to move. Insurance rates have skyrocketed to the point where moving oil through Hormuz is becoming economically unviable for smaller firms.
A shared pact is a solution for a peacetime dispute, not an active war zone where the primary actor’s regime survival is on the line.
If you want to stabilize the Strait of Hormuz, stop looking for grand historical analogies that do not fit the geography. The immediate path forward requires cold hard deterrence, a realistic maritime boundary agreement, and a complete cessation of infrastructure attacks.
Commercial operators looking to navigate these waters over the next few weeks should prepare for prolonged disruptions. Do not count on a sudden diplomatic breakthrough or a magical regional alliance to clear the waves. Ensure your vessels have updated emergency protocols for transponder-off navigation, coordinate directly with the international maritime security construct, and secure alternative offloading agreements via the East-West pipelines running through Saudi Arabia. The conflict is expanding, and the fantasy of a shared Gulf pact will not stop the missiles.
