the last days there were two developments in Lebanon and Iran that will likely cause the war to reignite into a much larger conflagration.
Iran insists on having control over the Strait of Hormuz. But at least half of the passage way is under Oman’s jurisdiction.
Oman is, unlike Iran, a member of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and has as such a different view of the international law with regards to the Strait situation. Oman is also a (former) UK/U.S. dependent. Iran’s attempts to pull the traditionally neutral Oman onto its side of the conflict have failed.
On Thursday the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) had arranged for a convoy of ships that had been stuck in the Persian Gulf for weeks to sail through the Strait right next to the coast of Oman. Iran saw this (falsely) as a breach of the Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. and (correctly) as an attempt to undermine its leverage:
Oman, in conjunction with the UN International Maritime Organization, has opened up a corridor for the purpose of evacuating ships from the Gulf. However, it is not hard to imagine that having regularized one-way traffic on the Oman side, that it would not soon become two-way traffic, vitiating Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz. And we have pointed out that with the southern side of the Strait being Oman territorial waters, if Iran interferes with ship transits there, its presumed legal argument would look an awful lot like what Israel has been hawking in its invasion of Lebanon, that it can run roughshod over Omani sovereignity out of a not-credible claim of a security risk.
Iran’s response to the challenge was a (harmless) drone attack on a container ship under the flag of Singapore which had used the IMO organized convoy to slip out of the Persian Gulf on its own. As the head of IMO announced during a press conference:
I have been informed of an attack today in the Gulf of Oman on a vessel which passed through the Strait of Hormuz. This vessel did not transit under IMO’s evacuation framework. I have always reiterated that the safety of the seafarers remains paramount. Therefore, to ensure a coordinated approach and navigational safety, the evacuation plan will be paused until further clarity is obtained. …”
No one got hurt in the drone attack. There was only minor damage to the ship.
The U.S. however used the incident, in which it was formerly not involved, to escalate the situation. Several U.S. airplanes launched stand-off missile attacks on Iranian radar installations near Sirik, a port city in southern Iran, near Hormuz.
Last night Iran announced that it had hit back:
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy has struck American military targets in the region in retaliation for earlier aggression against Iranian coastal areas.
The force made the remarks in a statement issued on Friday, saying its reprisal “targeted the deployment sites of the US terrorist military in the region.”
It noted that the retaliation came after American forces launched airstrikes against areas lying along the Iranian coastline as part of the United States’ changeless “pattern of breaching its commitments.”
Waging the aggression, Washington used “various pretexts, including the passage of a non-compliant vessel through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz,” the statement added.
It is not yet know which U.S. military sites the Iranian’s have been hit or what kind of damage the strike might have caused.
If the damage was small the U.S. may for now (again) stop the tit-for-tat. The situation could, for a moment, go quite again.
The development in Lebanon however points to its rather rapid re-escalation.
A abbreviated bit of background: After the Nakba and the loss of the 1968 Arab war against Israel many Palestinians had fled to Lebanon. This changed the demography of the previously majority Christian country. Lebanon slipped into a civil war between the various factions of the Christian, Druse, Sunni and Shia Muslim population.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) set up shop. It used the south of Lebanon for attacks on Israel. In 1983 Israel invaded Lebanon and occupied Beirut. Its aim was to defeat and expel the PLO but it soon ended up being hated by most parties of the multi-confessional Lebanese population. The deprived Shia, which had a large majority in the south, soon turned from being Israel friendly into its worst enemies.
The U.S. intervened and deployed ‘peacekeepers’ which took the side of the Maronite Christians. Suicide explosions hit the barracks of the U.S., French and other ‘peacekeepers’. The U.S. retreated. Israel installed its own proxy forces which lost against the growing Shia resistance. Only in the year 2000, under high pressure from the Shia resistance, did Israel leave its positions in south Lebanon.
The civil war died down. Political power was split which each domination getting a part. The Christian faction, which had shrunk significantly due to emigration, kept its dominant positions while the Shia, which are now the majority, were left under-represented.
In recent years a minor quarrel between the Shia Amal faction and the Iran allied Shia Hizbullah had allowed for the formation of an unrepresentative government under the former General Joseph Aoun, a Maronite Christian.
In conjunction with the war on Iran Israel re-invaded south Lebanon. While Iran, through the MoU, set the retreat of Israel from Lebanon as a condition for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the Lebanese government, under the pressure of U.S. sanctions, insisted on finding its own solution by selling out to the U.S. and Israel.
Yesterday it signed a Tripartite Agreement with the U.S. and Israel which will allow Israel to keep control over south Lebanon including over some 60 townships which it had cleansed of their Shia population. The agreement commits the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah, which it can not do, while allowing Israel to stay indefinitely.
For a deeper analysis of the agreement (and its illegality under Lebanese law) see here, here and especially here:
Lebanon is not a place where external powers can easily impose a security architecture against a major domestic constituency. It was not possible in 1983. It is not possible today.
The May 17 [1983] Agreement was buried because it lacked legitimacy, because it was tied to occupation, and because those expected to accept it had the capacity to reject it. The Washington framework may not be identical, but it carries the same weakness. It depends on Hezbollah’s disarmament without Hezbollah’s consent. It depends on Lebanese army enforcement without Lebanese political consensus. It depends on American mediation despite American partiality. It depends on Israeli withdrawal while giving Israel the authority to delay withdrawal.
That is not a peace process. It is a controlled crisis.
It is even more than that. Israel’s clear intention here is to reignite a Lebanese civil war and may well succeed.
Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 @ejmalrai – 8:54 UTC · Jun 27, 2026
The Lebanese resistance will not accept the long-term presence of Israeli occupation forces in the occupied south of Lebanon. Its response, whenever it comes, will underline the crisis of legitimacy created by President Joseph Aoun’s decision to remove the state of animosity with Israel, a power he does not possess, and to accept a so-called “buffer zone” that prevents the inhabitants of nearly 60 villages from returning to their homes.
The agreement about Lebanon will lead to replay of the 1980s situation. Like in 1983 this will be another brutal but fruitless attempt to sort out the conflict against the will of the population. A civil war will ensue, a U.S. military intervention will follow. It will be defeated by Hizbullah and end, maybe years from now, in an Israeli retreat.
U.S. and Israeli observers acknowledge that the agreement will likely lead to more war not only in Lebanon but in the wider Middle East region:
This is literally the opposite of peace. …
By interjecting this agreement now, literally in the midst of trying to negotiate an end to the American war with Iran, in the midst of a 60 day ceasefire with Iran — which, if successful, would end the fighting in Lebanon — we take action with these signatures in Washington today that makes it nearly impossible to maintain the cease-fire and reach a final settlement, and therefore makes war more likely.
While restarting the civil war in Lebanon and re-intensifying, via the U.S., the war on Iran, Israel is already setting its sight onto the next target:
Israel’s Minister of Science and Technology Gila Gamliel:
“Once we move beyond the Iranian regime, there is the Ottoman Empire’s ambition, which will seek to expand and spread its influence.
There is no doubt that Türkiye, with its ambitions to expand beyond its borders and to lead the region according to its own vision, poses a real future threat to the citizens of the State of Israel.
Israel always prepares for every threat, and there is no doubt that Türkiye is becoming a front that could indeed become a threat in the future.”
To which the Sunni NATO member Turkey responds by subtly honoring Shia theology:
Erdogan this week:
“I commemorate the Kerbela martyrs with mercy and respect. We have been experiencing the sorrow of the martyrdom of our master Husayn ibn Ali and his companions just as it was on that day for a full 14 centuries.”
Don’t be surprised when future news items report of Hizbullah logistics running through Turkey …