{"id":13021,"date":"2026-06-08T12:27:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aiyon.es\/the-strait-of-hormuz-under-international-law-sovereignty-and-freedom-of-navigation-in-conflict\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T12:52:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:52:43","slug":"the-strait-of-hormuz-under-international-law-sovereignty-and-freedom-of-navigation-in-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aiyon.es\/en\/the-strait-of-hormuz-under-international-law-sovereignty-and-freedom-of-navigation-in-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strait of Hormuz Under International Law: Sovereignty and Freedom of Navigation in Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em><strong>Author:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/aiyon.es\/en\/our-team\/veronica-meana\/\">Ver\u00f3nica Meana Larrucea \/ AIYON ABOGADOS S.L.P.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Strait of Hormuz has once again taken centre stage in the international maritime legal debate. Since the outbreak of the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran on 28 February 2026, Tehran has been progressively tightening its control over transit through the area, imposing prior authorisation requirements, selective restrictions and transit fees on certain vessels. The escalation intensified from 13 April onwards, when the United States launched Operation <em>Epic Fury<\/em>, which involves coercive naval actions against vessels linked to Iran and has led to the mass diversion of commercial traffic and the immobilisation of several Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The strategic importance of the strait is beyond question: approximately one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil and a substantial proportion of liquefied natural gas pass through it every day. Any disruption to this vital artery has immediate consequences for energy markets, maritime transport and global trade. But beyond the geopolitical dimension, the conflict raises a legal controversy of the first order regarding the limits of state control in international straits and the scope of the principle of freedom of navigation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The relevant legal framework is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, Montego Bay, 1982), which distinguishes between the regime of innocent passage\u2014applicable to territorial waters and granting the coastal State a wider scope of control\u2014and the special regime of transit passage set out in Articles 37 to 44 for certain international straits. The latter recognises a right of continuous and expeditious transit which coastal States may not impede or suspend.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Iran maintains that the context of armed conflict entitles it to adopt control measures comparable to the regime of innocent passage. The majority of the international community argues, on the basis of Article 44 of UNCLOS, that the special regime of transit passage applies to the Strait of Hormuz, which precludes the imposition of prior authorisations or general restrictions on maritime traffic.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The dispute also involves a legal paradox of considerable significance: neither the United States nor Iran has ratified UNCLOS. Washington, on the one hand, considers that its fundamental provisions form part of customary international law and are therefore binding even on non-party states. Iran, on the other hand, invokes the doctrine of the persistent objector: having expressed constant and systematic opposition to the regime of transit passage since the very negotiations of the Convention, it denies that this regime is enforceable against it as a rule of customary law.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, a significant body of legal scholarship holds that the freedom of navigation through international straits existed even before UNCLOS. In this regard, the International Court of Justice had already recognised in the Corfu Channel case (1949) the right of passage through international straits without prior authorisation from the coastal State, a principle it reaffirmed in Nicaragua v. United States (1986) by confirming that freedom of navigation remains in force as a customary rule regardless of its subsequent codification in treaties. However, the Corfu judgment also established a key limitation: unilateral actions by a State in foreign waters \u2014 in that case, the Royal Navy\u2019s mine clearance in Albanian waters \u2014 infringe upon the territorial sovereignty of the coastal State even if carried out in the name of freedom of navigation. That unresolved tension between sovereignty and freedom of passage remains at the heart of the problem in the Strait of Hormuz today.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two further issues merit attention in this dispute. Firstly, Iran\u2019s proposal to impose tolls on maritime transit is in direct conflict with Article 26 of UNCLOS, which prohibits the imposition of charges for the mere passage of vessels, except where such charges are in return for services actually rendered to the vessel. Unlike artificial canals such as Suez or Panama, the Strait of Hormuz is a natural strait whose legal regime is based on freedom of transit. Oman, also a coastal State and a party to UNCLOS, has publicly rejected this possibility.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Secondly, and conversely, Article 39 of UNCLOS imposes on ships in transit themselves an obligation to refrain from any threat or use of force against coastal States, a particularly sensitive issue in light of the US naval operations currently underway.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The situation in the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates that international maritime law remains, ultimately, a delicate balance between state sovereignty and freedom of navigation. The dispute pits not merely two conflicting legal interpretations against one another, but two distinct conceptions of the limits of state control in one of the world\u2019s most strategic maritime corridors. Its resolution \u2014 or its prolongation \u2014 will have consequences that extend far beyond the waters of the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aiyon.es\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Tribuna-Aiyon.pdf\">Access the article&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author: Ver\u00f3nica Meana Larrucea \/ AIYON ABOGADOS S.L.P. The Strait of Hormuz has once again taken centre stage in the international maritime legal debate. Since the outbreak of the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran on 28 February 2026, Tehran has been progressively tightening its control over transit through the area, imposing prior [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,74,199,75],"tags":[200],"class_list":["post-13021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insurance","category-legal-en","category-press-release","category-shipping","tag-regulation-ec-no-261-2004-and-the-concept-of-extraordinary-circumstances-in-air-transport"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Strait of Hormuz Under International Law: Sovereignty and Freedom of Navigation in Conflict - Aiyon abogados<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Strait of Hormuz Under International Law: Sovereignty and Freedom of Navigation in Conflict\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aiyon.es\/en\/the-strait-of-hormuz-under-international-law-sovereignty-and-freedom-of-navigation-in-conflict\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Strait of Hormuz Under International Law: Sovereignty and Freedom of Navigation in Conflict - 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