Running thin

Good morning, friends — our apologies for the late arrival in your inboxes this afternoon. It’s a heavy one as we return from our August publication holiday. The Strait of Hormuz is a ghost lane today, emptier than at any point since the war began: Five ships made the crossing on Saturday — and none at all yesterday.

The mood in the region’s capitals is turning, and not toward patience. Six months into a war none of the Gulf started, our governments are watching their main export artery sit shut while Washington and Tehran trade ultimatums. The frustration is now on the record: One Gulf official put it to the Washington Post about as bluntly as it gets — “Trump started this war, and we are paying the price.” Anger with Washington, the paper reports, is at its highest since the February strikes on Iran.

When Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Islamabad sign a fresh defense pact, and diplomats start muttering that “the US is not enough,” the story stops being only about Hormuz. Today, it’s about whether the security bargain the Gulf has banked on for two generations is still viable. While nobody has an answer yet, the question is being asked out loud now, which is in itself new.

All of it comes to a head today. An interim memorandum on safe passage expires and Qatari mediators say they’re hearing “positive messages” on talks resuming before it does. Maybe, but we’ve watched two of these deadlines slide already, and the Iran-Oman corridor plan doesn’t have buy-in at the top in Tehran.

Away from the water: Egypt is finally lining up for Syria’s reconstruction, Abu Dhabi and Doha are following BP into Venezuelan gas, and OpenAI is offering inference with data residency in the UAE. Business in our corner of the world doesn’t stop when the strait does — it just gets a bit harder. –Patrick