Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Authority application is still the only piece of public paper describing the Hormuz permission regime. The paper's Friday piece on the PGSA form argued that the document had outlasted the Trump-Xi summit language as evidence. Saturday's news fits the document but does not extend it.

Within hours of President Trump leaving Beijing, Iran seized a tanker near Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates and sank an Indian-flagged cargo ship near Oman. [1][2] Both actions fit the pattern the May 15 major identified: selective enforcement against US-affiliated or US-cargo traffic while Chinese-linked vessels continue to receive passage under the same procedural architecture. [1]

What did not appear Saturday is a second artifact. There is no new PGSA bulletin published to the Iran Ports & Maritime Organization site that would broaden the form into a regulation, a tariff schedule, or a published list of cleared and refused vessels. [3] The protocol remains operational; the paper trail remains a single page.

That distinction is the reason this is a wire item and not a major. Iran has produced enough operational evidence to argue the regime is real. It has not produced enough documentary evidence to let outside parties — insurers, charterers, sanctions counsel, foreign ministries — work the system on something other than the original form and the latest incident. Until a second piece of paper exists, every seizure must be interpreted against the same one.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem