What Iran’s Hormuz play means for Malacca freedoms — and why India should be speaking up |
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What Iran’s Hormuz play means for Malacca freedoms — and why India should be speaking up
The physical arteries of India's economic rise depend on a single legal principle that Iran's conduct during this crisis has put under serious pressure.
The two-week ceasefire between Iran and the US-Israel has come alongside Tehran’s decision to allow safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz. If the ceasefire holds, tankers will move again, insurance rates will fall, and the immediate pressure on India’s energy supply will ease. But the legal architecture Iran used to close the strait — and the precedent it has set for every narrow international waterway that matters to India — will still be standing when the first ship transits.
A fortnight-long ceasefire does not repeal Iran’s 1993 Marine Areas Act, dissolve the Qeshm-Larak toll corridor established during the closure, or resolve the question that Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan raised in Parliament this week—and that India has yet to answer. The crisis has paused; the question has not.
India’s energy security runs through the Strait of Hormuz. Its trade with East and Southeast Asia runs through the Strait of Malacca. Its naval reach into the Pacific runs through the waters east of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. These are not abstract strategic interests; they are the physical arteries of India’s economic rise — and they all depend on a single legal principle that Iran’s conduct during this crisis has put under serious pressure, with consequences for every other strait India relies on.
When Balakrishnan stated flatly that Singapore would neither negotiate with Iran for passage nor pay tolls, he was defending that principle. He was also implicitly making an argument that has meaning for India, too. The ceasefire pause is exactly the right moment for India to examine it.
Two rules, one Strait
The Law of the Sea has two distinct regimes governing how foreign ships pass through coastal state waters. The older one, innocent passage, comes from the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea. Under innocent passage, a foreign ship may cross through a coastal state’s territorial waters — the band of sea extending 12 nautical miles from the shore — provided it does so continuously, peacefully, and without threatening the coastal state’s security. The coastal state retains significant authority: it can require prior notification for warships, impose conditions, and, in some circumstances, suspend passage. The right exists, but it is hedged.
The newer regime, transit passage, was created specifically for international straits under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The logic for this insertion was simple: some straits are so important to global trade and navigation that the older innocent passage........