But the blockade also squeezes purchasers of Iranian oil—most notably China, which in recent times has purchased up to 90% of Iran's seaborne crude, including more than 500 million barrels last year. Speaking alongside Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Khaled bin Mohamed in Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned that “we must not allow the world to revert to the law of the jungle.”
Those rules are chiefly set out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, which since 1994 has served as the foundational treaty establishing global legal standards for ocean usage, resource management, and maritime jurisdictions. Although the U.S. has not signed UNCLOS, it recognizes most of the convention as “customary international law.” China has signed and ratified UNCLOS, though has attached addendums regarding its interpretation of certain clauses (to its own benefit, naturally).
The fear is China can use the example of current U.S. action in the Gulf to argue that national security similarly supersedes UNCLOS in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, moving from gray zone harassment to a formal, legalized blockade of islands or shipping lanes it claims as territorial waters. “It would set a precedent for China to argue that the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway,” Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy, tells TIME.
Beijing has been drastically ramping up its blockade capability as tensions continue to grow with the China-skeptic government in Taiwan. On Dec. 29, China launched its most extensive military drills around Taiwan, involving more than 200 aircraft and dozens of naval and coastguard vessels simulating a total blockade of the island.
The danger is that the U.S. asserting the right to control passage through a global chokepoint based on the behavior of the littoral state, in this case Iran, could be interpreted as handing China the reciprocal right to police the Taiwan Strait and wider South China Sea, stopping any vessel it deems a threat to its interpretation of “One China” sovereignty.
Moreover, the U.S. faces credibility challenges when criticizing China’s actions because of its own record of military interventions and coercive measures. “I think the Chinese believe that the willingness of the international community to ‘punish’ them is probably lower now,” says Oriana Skylar Mastro, a professor and expert on China's military at Stanford University.
Of course, there are additional legal frameworks outside of UNCLOS that specifically govern behavior during times of conflict, such as the law of naval warfare, which does allow for blockades. Under those terms, states like the U.S. can exercise the belligerent right of visit and search against neutral flagged ships to determine that no war material or war-sustaining aid is going to an adversary. (Iran has similar rights to the extent it can exercise them.) “So, the question is whether that $2 million toll is a sufficient threshold for providing a war-sustaining benefit to the Iranian regime,” says James Kraska, a professor of International Maritime Law at the U.S. Naval War College. “I can see arguments on both sides.”
Of course, were the Strait of Hormuz blockade to stand alone, the damage might be easy to shrug off. But while the last U.S. President to green light a naval blockade was George H.W. Bush as part of U.N. sanctions enforcement during the 1990–1991 Gulf War, Trump has now unilaterally ordered three in the past year: against Venezuela, Cuba, and now Iran.
Still, operationally at least, recent U.S. blockades appear successful in exerting pressure. On Tuesday, Trump teased that the U.S. and Iran will return to Pakistan for more peace talks later this week. But it remains to be seen whether there will be hidden costs for the U.S. and allies down the line.
(Illustration Source Images: Julien De Rosa—AFP/Getty Images, Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data/Getty Images (2), Giuseppe Cacace—AFP/Getty Images)
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