| > The strait is not and has never been Iran's sovereign territory. About half of it is, yes? Wikipedia has a nice map [1] which shows the agreed-upon maritime boundaries and there's also some disputed islands where there's no agreed up on boundaries listed. Wikipedia isn't absolutely correct, but where a body of water separates two sovereign states, the territorial waters tend to meet around the middle, with specific definition by treaty. There's also a pretty detailed US state department report [2] on the boundaries in the Persian Gulf, Straight of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman that lines up with the wikipedia map by my eye. I'm not sure if the TeleGeography [3] maps are supposed to be representative of where the cables are laid or more of a general picture idea like a subway map. Anyway, looking at the two maps at the same time, it seems like at least some of those cables are in Iranian territorial waters. It would seem that, with care, new cables that don't land in Iran could be placed in the Persian Gulf and avoiding Iranian waters; although the Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf are quite a bit deeper, than waters on the other side; which is why the shipping lanes tend to be in Iranian waters. This reverses at the straight where the (depicted) lanes are in the deeper Omani waters. > Or should the UAE and Oman start trying to charge fees to ships trying to cross the strait too? Now seems like a good time to raise fees? Both countries have a chokepoint if Iran is going to play hardball. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Strait_o... [2] https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/LIS-94.pdf [3] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ |
That's international law, as it stands.
Iran passed its own law in 2003 claiming 12nm. They can only assert that claim through violence.