The strait, the law, and the public faith

The Hill reports that Vice President JD Vance has acknowledged 'some progress over the last few days' in negotiations between Iran and Oman over the Strait of Hormuz — that narrow channel through which, by general estimate, a substantial portion of the world's seaborne oil passes. The talks are linked, it appears, to broader nuclear negotiations. I cannot speak to the technical particulars of centrifuges or enrichment ratios; those are instruments of a later science. But the shape of the question — a maritime passage, a sovereign dispute, and the conduct of nations toward one another — is as old as any matter I was called to settle.

Free navigation of international straits is not a courtesy extended by the stronger to the weaker. It is, by the law of nations as it has long been understood, an obligation owed by all parties to commerce itself. When I negotiated with Britain over the terms that would end our Revolution, the freedom of the seas was never a peripheral concern — it was bound up in every clause touching trade, debts, and the rights of neutrals. A nation that closes a passage through which the lawful commerce of many others must flow does not merely injure its immediate adversaries; it announces to every watching state that agreements, when inconvenient, may be set aside by force or threat.

Oman's role as mediator deserves notice. A smaller power, trusted by both parties, offering its good offices — this is precisely the mechanism the law of nations imagined for reducing quarrels without humiliation. I would counsel those now negotiating to honor that role: do not let domestic political pressures on either side collapse what quiet diplomacy has begun to build. The Hill's report suggests midterm calculations are already coloring how each party frames the talks. That is the oldest and most corrosive habit in diplomacy — subordinating the durable settlement to the immediate election.

The construction of any agreement reached here will matter enormously. Vague language that each party may read as it pleases is not a treaty; it is a postponed argument. I speak from experience: the Jay Treaty of 1794 was attacked on every side precisely because its terms, where they were clear, bound parties to things they had hoped to avoid, and where they were ambiguous, invited dispute. Clarity is not the enemy of negotiation; it is its final test. Whatever instrument emerges from these talks — whether a memorandum, a protocol, or a formal convention — its words will be cited in the next crisis. Choose them accordingly.

Finally, on the question of what America's posture should be: the interest of this Republic in open passage is not partisan. It predates every faction now contending for advantage. A nation that depends on seaborne commerce — whether for energy, for manufactured goods, or for the financial instruments that underwrite both — has a structural interest in the principle that straits shall remain open to lawful navigation. That interest does not change with the administration. What I would urge, then, is not a particular outcome in these negotiations, which I am not positioned to predict, but a particular discipline: let the negotiators negotiate, let the agreement be written with precision, and let no one mistake a press statement for a treaty. The public faith is a serious thing. Handle it seriously.