Strait of Hormuz: UN evacuates 2,500 seafarers before attack freezes rescue operation
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) said that 115 ships carrying roughly 2,500 crew members had left the Gulf during the first three and a half days of the operation. The figures offered the first concrete measure of an evacuation launched this week to rescue some 11,000 mariners stranded aboard 600 vessels since the war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran erupted in late February.The evacuation was paused on Thursday after a container ship, the Ever Lovely, was struck while transiting the strait near Oman’s coast. The vessel was not participating in the IMO-led operation, Arsenio Dominguez, the head of the UN agency, said during a press conference on Friday.“We’re still on the investigation of exactly what happened to the vessel,” Mr. Dominguez told reporters from his office in London. But, he added, “what I can confirm to you is [the ship] was not contacting the authorities in Oman in order to transit, following the evacuation framework.”His remarks offered the clearest picture yet of a rescue effort that has become entangled in the fragile diplomacy surrounding one of the world’s most strategically important waterways.A rescue mission meets geopoliticsThe Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes in peacetime, has become one of the central tests of the preliminary peace agreement reached last week between Washington and Tehran. Although the memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries ended hostilities and reopened the waterway in principle, it left unresolved a fundamental question: who ultimately controls navigation through the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean.Thursday’s attack exposed the practical consequences of that ambiguity.Iran had already warned that only routes authorized by Tehran should be used, while many commercial vessels had been sailing along a southern corridor close to Oman’s coastline under arrangements coordinated by Oman, the United States and the IMO. On Friday, Iranian authorities again asserted their right to regulate traffic through the Strait, underscoring the uncertainty that now hangs over the maritime provisions of the broader peace process.
