France's Foreign Ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux told reporters in Paris Friday that France has drafted a UN Security Council resolution to set up an international mission to restore movement through the Strait of Hormuz, and could submit it "if conditions are right." [1] The text exists on paper. No co-sponsor has put a name on it.

The draft is the alternative to a US-Bahraini text the paper's Wednesday lead on Trump's "no hurry" pivot treated as the unresolved end of the deadline week. [1] Russia and China signalled they would veto the US-Bahraini draft, which has secured roughly 140 co-sponsors but no path past the P5. France has refused to back it. The "Maritime Freedom Construct" Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot floated from Abu Dhabi in late April is the policy frame that the Friday draft converts into a tabled text. [1]

Confavreux did not name a co-sponsor, did not commit to a tabling date, and did not specify the mission's composition. The UK has been the obvious second signatory inside the original Anglo-French construct; London produced no public reply Friday. The five Gulf states that wrote jointly to the IMO Friday warning shipping companies not to comply with Iran's PGSA map — Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE — are the natural Gulf co-sponsors. None has signed on either.

A Security Council draft without a co-sponsor is the same artifact as a coordinate polygon without recognition. The text is ready; the politics are not.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem