On: Iran war: US to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz

Tuesday

The announcement of ‘Project Freedom’ to escort ships through the Strait has clarified a great deal. One had always wondered about the precise administrative status of a blockade. It appears it is not, as one might romantically suppose, a continuous wall of grim grey hulls, but rather a sort of intermittent bureaucratic condition, like a postal strike. Ships become ‘stuck’, a word which implies they have merely adhered to the geopolitical surface, like a sweet wrapper to a warm pavement. The American solution, therefore, is not to dissolve the adhesive, but to provide an escort. This is the municipal equivalent of sending out a man with a clipboard to walk beside the dropped wrapper, noting its progress and assuring passers-by that its movement is both sanctioned and orderly.

Iran’s complaint that this is a truce violation is, of course, the core of the matter. A truce, one must remember, is not a state of peace but a state of documented non-shooting. Introducing an authorised escort service into a documented non-shooting zone creates a new category of event: the chaperoned potential incident. It is no longer a matter of ‘you may not fire’, but ‘you may not fire at this specific vessel, which is currently under our official notice of protection’. The paperwork of conflict expands to include permission slips for safe passage. The next logical step is inevitable: a queue. Applications for escort slots, filed in triplicate, with waiting times published online, and a premium service for expedited review. The war continues, but it is now subject to a booking system. One misses the simplicity of the broadside.