Hormuz to reopen after superpowers complete mandatory behaviour course
With Tehran demanding Washington correct its conduct, diplomats have reportedly embraced the last available instrument of statecraft: a laminated improvement plan.
A satirical international behaviour course becomes the fictional condition for reopening the Strait of Hormuz after Iran demands that the US correct its conduct. Diplomats must master listening, restraint and passing a model tanker without turning it into a security crisis.
TEHRAN — The Strait of Hormuz will reopen only after the world’s leading powers complete a mandatory geopolitical behaviour course and demonstrate that they can spend an entire afternoon together without threatening anyone, according to an entirely satirical maritime compliance scheme unveiled amid the latest crisis over the strategic waterway.
The invented programme, called Constructive Conduct for Countries, converts Iran’s reported demand that the United States “correct its behaviour” into a formal syllabus featuring supervised listening, responsible use of aircraft carriers and a short written exercise entitled “Explain Why Everyone Is Shouting”. Successful governments will receive a certificate, a modestly approving nod and permission to resume treating one of the planet’s most important shipping routes as something other than a bargaining counter.
The actual dispute is rather less tidy. According to reporting cited by the Guardian, Iran’s supreme national security council said the strait would not reopen until the United States corrected its behaviour. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, said one of its ships had been targeted by an Iranian missile. A settlement remained out of reach, as settlements habitually do once every participant has described its minimum demand as non-negotiable.
Officials in Tehran have not endorsed the imaginary course, while Washington has not confirmed that it owns enough pencils to attend. Nevertheless, diplomats privately welcomed the fictional arrangement as more intelligible than the existing system, under which states issue grave statements, reposition expensive machinery and then wait for somebody else to become reasonable first.
A curriculum for the permanently disappointed
Sir Alistair Dimmock, fictional director of the International Office of Corrective Geopolitical Conduct, said the programme was designed for governments that had exhausted sanctions, summits, back channels, front channels and the particularly ineffective channel known as speaking slowly at a lectern.
“This is not punishment,” Dimmock said. “It is an opportunity for sovereign states to reflect on their choices in a calm room with stackable chairs. Participants will be encouraged to use phrases such as ‘I understand your security concern’ rather than ‘there will be consequences’, which has tested poorly in every region since the invention of consequences.”
“Participants must show they can distinguish deterrence from escalation without answering ‘whichever one we are doing’.”
The opening module, Strategic Self-Awareness, asks delegations to identify whether their latest military manoeuvre is defensive, offensive or merely described as defensive because the press release was already printed. A second module covers tone, including the difference between a diplomatic warning and a sentence that causes oil traders to stare silently at three monitors.
Students must then complete a group exercise in which they pass a model tanker around a table without blockading it, boarding it, sanctioning it, escorting it with warships or using it as a metaphor. Course assessors expect this portion to occupy most of the week.
“We tried giving everyone separate models,” said Maribel Quince, the office’s wholly invented senior facilitator for maritime sulking. “But they immediately established competing security zones around them. One delegation demanded inspection rights over the biscuit tray. We have therefore removed the biscuits pending confidence-building measures.”
Final assessment will be based on a government’s ability to hear an accusation without producing a twelve-page catalogue of the other side’s previous offences. Additional credit is available for admitting that a policy has not worked, although organisers conceded that no major power has yet attempted the question.
The old choreography returns
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow and strategically vital passage linking the Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Its importance to global energy shipments means any threat to navigation produces immediate international alarm, urgent diplomatic activity and a flourishing secondary industry in maps with ominous arrows.
The present confrontation follows the established choreography. Iran points to American conduct. Washington points to Iranian conduct. Regional states point to the shipping lane. Markets point upwards. Diplomats announce that discussions have been constructive, meaning that everybody remained seated until the allotted time expired.
The reported UAE allegation that one of its vessels was targeted has added another grave element to the crisis. The claim and the broader negotiations have been covered by outlets including BBC News. SnarkWire’s behaviour course, to be clear, exists only as satire; the risks to vessels, crews and regional stability do not.
One is reminded, inevitably, of every previous maritime crisis in which unrestricted access to water became dependent on several capitals proving they could be trusted near it. Humanity has spent centuries mastering navigation and rather less time learning what to say after arriving.
Washington requests clarification
Under the imaginary scheme, the United States would be required to submit a Behaviour Correction Plan explaining which behaviour was being corrected, how correction would be measured and whether announcing the correction would itself constitute provocative behaviour. Iran would then review the document and return it with comments in the margins, beginning a confidence-building process expected to last until the oceans evaporate or a junior official finds the correct template.
Clive Remainder, a fictional Western diplomatic adviser, said Washington’s principal objection concerned precedent.
“If the United States completes a behaviour course, other countries may conclude that behaviour can be corrected,” he said. “That would place intolerable pressure on the entire international system, which depends upon every government insisting it has behaved impeccably under unusually difficult circumstances created by everyone else.”
Remainder added that American negotiators might accept a less judgemental title, such as Advanced Strategic Conduct Enhancement Seminar. “It means precisely the same thing,” he said, “but sounds like something the Pentagon could award a contract for.”
Iran’s fictional place on the course has also proved delicate. Organisers initially listed Tehran as both complainant and participant, prompting an objection that the party requesting corrected behaviour should not have to correct any of its own. The syllabus was subsequently amended so that all governments attend as “mutually disappointed stakeholders”, the preferred diplomatic term for people who have arrived with folders of grievances.
Conditional progress, pending further conditions
Shipping representatives greeted the imaginary initiative with the disciplined optimism of an industry accustomed to having its commercial timetable revised by missiles, mines, sanctions and men using the phrase “strategic patience”.
“We support any process that keeps the strait open and the vessels moving,” said Noor Fairweather, the fictional chair of the Association for Boats That Would Prefer Not to Be Involved. “Our members transport fuel, food and goods. They do not carry sufficient storage capacity for every government’s historical resentment.”
Course organisers said reopening could begin after an initial cooling-off session in which delegations sit quietly and write down one thing they could have done differently. Early trials were suspended when several participants wrote “chosen better adversaries”.
For now, the strait remains caught between hard demands and harder realities, while negotiations continue in the traditional atmosphere of public certainty and private improvisation. The behaviour certificates have been printed, the chairs arranged and the model tanker placed carefully in the centre of the table.
All that remains is for the powers involved to enter the room, accept that the exercise applies to them and refrain from disputing the seating plan. On current diplomatic form, shipping may wish to bring a book.
