The Strait of Hormuz has not reopened. Three Qatari LNG tankers have crossed it this week. Those two facts are not in contradiction — they define the situation precisely.

As the paper's May 12 account of the single Qatari LNG ship that crossed Hormuz by permission established, this is not a reopening — it is a permission regime, and by Wednesday that regime had extended to three tankers without any formal agreement appearing on paper.

Iran declared the strait closed in early March, following the American and Israeli airstrikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Commercial shipping has largely complied with that declaration. The 26 vessels still held in or near Hormuz represent roughly 900,000 barrels per day of crude and condensate that cannot move [1]. Insurance underwriters have not reclassified the waterway. The IRGC Navy has not withdrawn.

What has changed is that Iran has begun granting individual permission for specific cargoes to specific destinations under specific political conditions. The Qatari LNG crossing on May 12 — the Al Kharaitiyat, bound for Pakistan's Port Qasim — was cleared by Iranian authorities as part of a government-to-government arrangement between Tehran and Islamabad [2]. Pakistan is in an acute energy crisis. Iran has leverage. The passage was the price of something.

That permission was never formalized. No document has been signed. No multilateral framework authorized the crossing. Iran communicated clearance through diplomatic channels and the ship moved. The next ship requires the same process — a fresh request, a fresh decision, a fresh political calculation in Tehran about whether the passage serves Iranian interests on that particular day [3].

This is the structural story underneath the headlines about tankers transiting. The narrative frame of "Hormuz opening" misrepresents what is actually happening. A waterway opened by international law, treaty, or even tacit durable arrangement would generate a different set of signals: insurance rate reductions, resumed AIS broadcasts from previously dark vessels, a visible drawdown in the held-ship count. None of those signals have appeared.

What has appeared instead is a bilateral exception regime. Iran decides who crosses and when, using the strait as a tool of ongoing political leverage. Pakistan needed gas and asked; Iran said yes, this time. Malaysia needed its ships and asked; Iran said yes, weeks ago, under different conditions. The exception does not generalize. Each permission is its own transaction.

The EU frigate positioned in the region, the Aspides mission's ongoing monitoring mandate, and the American carrier group in the northern Arabian Sea have not changed the underlying calculus. Their presence has not induced Iran to formalize or liberalize the crossing regime. If anything, the exception system serves Tehran better than a return to open passage would — it creates continuous leverage, country by country, cargo by cargo, without the cost of an internationally illegal blockade order that explicitly names the closure.

The held ships are the leverage pool. Twenty-six vessels represent the collateral Tehran holds against the world's demand for oil access. So long as that pool exists, the exceptions Iran grants are favors, not rights. The price of each favor is political compliance [1].

A written agreement would transform the situation. It would create an obligation, a dispute mechanism, a text that other parties could cite. Iran has not offered one, and the parties receiving exceptions — Pakistan, Malaysia — have not pressed for one. They have what they need: their cargo moving.

The strait is open by permission. The permission has never been put in writing. And until it is, the strait is not open.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem