Simon Henderson is the Baker Senior Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute, specializing in energy matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
Articles & Testimony
Regardless of the Hormuz initiative's supposedly peaceful intent, foreign officials should be careful not to give Tehran any rights in the strategic waterway that don’t have to be given.
Tensions in the Persian Gulf remain high, but today Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will have presented to the UN in New York his “Hormuz Peace Initiative.” Allow for your jaw to drop even lower: In a speech in Tehran on Sunday, he said “the gist of [it] is love and hope.” The flowery rhetoric obscures a hard fact. Rouhani is merely repeating Tehran’s longstanding position: “The security of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Sea of Oman is indigenous. Foreign forces could cause problems and insecurity for our nation and region.” In other words, there is no role for foreign navies...
