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Lead story

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he had hit pause on “Project Freedom,” the U.S. military’s operation to force open the Strait of Hormuz. But that doesn’t mean the operation’s objectives were met.

Navigation through the key waterway remains treacherous and an uncertainty. And even if this wasn’t clear before the war started, Iran now knows that it can leverage the strait to advance its aims.

But weaponizing geographical choke points is nothing new, as Vivek Krishnamurthy explores in today’s lead story. An expert on international law at the University of Colorado Boulder, Krishnamurthy takes us back through the centuries to Denmark’s levying of Sound Dues on ships passing through the narrow Øresund Strait. It was U.S.-led diplomatic efforts that eventually saw to the toll being abolished in 1857. Since then, the laws of transit have been codified through international agreements.

But Iran isn’t the only country testing the water, and such challenges to free passage usually signify a greater trend, writes Krishnamurthy: “They are symptoms of the same underlying condition: an international order losing the shared commitment that has often made its rules enforceable.”

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