It has been two weeks since the United States and Iran signed their memorandum of understanding to end active fighting in the latest war in the Middle East, so a logical question to ask is: How are things going?
The answer is: not great. Iran has already received sanctions relief through the summer, boosting its exports of oil, as well as written commitments from the United States to release billions of dollars in frozen assets. The Strait of Hormuz, while not entirely closed as it was this spring, is not entirely open yet, either, even though that was the whole point of the MOU. Whatever leverage the United States had until recently has been whittled away, just like its store of munitions.
It has been two weeks since the United States and Iran signed their memorandum of understanding to end active fighting in the latest war in the Middle East, so a logical question to ask is: How are things going?
The answer is: not great. Iran has already received sanctions relief through the summer, boosting its exports of oil, as well as written commitments from the United States to release billions of dollars in frozen assets. The Strait of Hormuz, while not entirely closed as it was this spring, is not entirely open yet, either, even though that was the whole point of the MOU. Whatever leverage the United States had until recently has been whittled away, just like its store of munitions.
Take Hormuz. Traffic is sort of moving again—not at the same level as before the war, when well over 100 ships would transit the narrow corridor every day. But for the past week, about 40 or so ships have entered or exited daily, a huge increase from the war-blocked months when no vessels would dare. Importantly, more ships are going through with their transponders on (defying Iranian threats and remaining visible), and more tankers are transiting as well. Benchmark oil prices continue to fall, down to about $70 a barrel.
On the other hand, a lot of those tankers are Iranian. Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Tuesday that Iran had exported 40 million barrels of oil since the MOU was signed, which, if true, would work out to something like 3 million barrels a day. That is a bigger number than Iran was exporting before the war, but since a lot of that oil came from “floating storage,” or oil stored on stationary tankers, it’s possible. Either way, Tehran is making money—up to a point.
The U.S. sanctions relief on Iranian oil exports has an expiration date: General License X expires in late August. Most countries, banks, and refiners are leery of dealing with sanctioned entities until they have real clarity that such business will be legitimate. So, for now, Iran is just pushing more product to its usual buyers (i.e., China).
The problems that are cropping up in U.S.-Iran relations stem in large part from the 14-point MOU that committed the United States to a lot and Iran to a little. In exchange for sanctions relief, access to frozen funds, an Iranian vow to control the Strait of Hormuz but later, and many billions of dollars in reconstruction funds in the future if a final deal is signed, Iran committed to basically nothing.
“The text is drafted in such a way that I have been calling it a ‘memo of misunderstanding,’” said Miad Maleki, a sanctions expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank that advocates a hawkish approach to Iran.
“This is Iran’s way. On certain things, like sanctions relief, they know what they want, while their phased commitments are very vague,” said Maleki, who spent nearly a decade at the U.S. Treasury Department orchestrating sanctions. “The Iranian regime never wants to negotiate to resolve problems—they negotiate to manage pressure.”
Case in point: The indirect talks this week in Doha, Qatar, between the United States and Iran—which from the U.S. point of view were meant to start chewing on the bone of the question of Iran’s nuclear program—are still, at Tehran’s behest, bogged down in the implementation of an understanding reached last month. Iranian officials such as Ghalibaf insist that the United States has to meet the written conditions laid out in the MOU before more serious talks can begin.
Just to take a step back: The United States expended a large portion of its munitions, both precision-guided bombs and missiles such as Tomahawks and advanced missile interceptors such as Patriots, in a multiweek burst of “epic fury” in order to create a situation where Iran believes it will remain in control of one of the world’s key shipping corridors (and may well do so), all while ensuring for itself sanctions relief and billions of dollars in economic oxygen.
While U.S. President Donald Trump still mulls the idea of restarting the war with Iran, few take that seriously because kinetic action achieved little except higher gasoline prices, and the U.S. midterm elections are now even closer. To get a short-term peace, Trump offered all carrots and no sticks. Even future carrots: The MOU actually commits the United States to refraining from future sanctions on Iran.
“The only leverage we have left is to threaten to reinstate the blockade,” said Maleki, noting how much harm the U.S. embargo on all maritime traffic had, by Tehran’s own admission, on the Iranian economy. “I kind of feel like we gave away the leverage we had for nothing concrete, not even the opening of Hormuz.”
Even if the Biden administration was at times lax on the enforcement of sanctions against Iran, such as on shadow tankers and oil exports, former President Joe “Biden never said no new sanctions. We have agreed to no new sanctions, so that is a very important point of leverage that the Iranians got from us,” Maleki added.
The really pressing question is what happens with Hormuz. Iran has said for months that it does not intend to go back to the way things were, before the war, and has toyed with a toll scheme or a service fee scheme and every manner of interference in the free movement of shipping. Now, reportedly, the Omanis are on board with some sort of pay-to-play regime for shipping in the Persian Gulf.
It’s important to separate the Iranian rhetoric from the future reality. While Iran and Oman do, in conjunction with U.S. Central Command, control the Strait of Hormuz today, tomorrow may be different. Iran doesn’t have a lot of friends, and those it does have either live on the strait or rely on it.
“Iran cannot go against the only allies it has left. It has to go back to the way it was. So they are going to have to reassess what they are doing in the strait,” Maleki said.
Once U.S. attention shifts from the Middle East, “Iran will focus on how to repair its relationships with Gulf allies and the Chinese, and the only way to do that is by restoring free transit through the strait.”
