Global powers weaponize transit and infrastructure access

Iranian diplomats offered to reopen maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief. The proposal tests whether Washington will trade economic concessions for a pause in Gulf hostilities.

I'm Daniel.

And I'm Shira. This is another episode of Crosswinds, a Daily Lion production, where we trace the relationships that decide what happens to Israel next. We'll start with the negotiations over Hormuz.

The military campaign the United States and Israel launched against Iran on February twenty-eighth has now lasted seven months,. The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked. It previously carried twenty percent of global oil shipments. And replacing that seaborne trade volume overland would require twenty thousand trucks crossing the border every single day. So this week, American envoys and the Iranian foreign minister held a three-hour indirect meeting. They met through Qatari mediators on the sidelines of the U N General Assembly in New York. The proposal on the table specifies a timeline to pause regional fighting and reopen the strait.

That proposal's getting a very cold reception from American and Israeli security hawks. For them, Tehran's offering a truce solely because maximum pressure and military strikes have pushed it to the brink of financial collapse. Iran's gross domestic product dropped by more than ten percent in a matter of weeks. The American president argues the regime's seeking an immediate deal because they're losing so badly. Their navy's sunk. And inflation's running well over three hundred percent,. The proposed terms demand sweeping naval and economic concessions just to enter negotiations. That includes access to billions of dollars in frozen assets. The American ambassador to the U N calls the offer a cynical attempt to secure massive relief, in her words, just to talk. Those on the right note that eight days after signing a memorandum of understanding with the United States in June, Iran was attacking ships again. Tehran was already holding hundreds of kilograms of uranium enriched to sixty percent prior to the June strikes. That's far above any civilian requirement. The American president vows he'll never allow the country to have a nuclear weapon. He warns against empowering a regime that slaughtered its own citizens to operate from behind a nuclear shield. So the Foundation for Defense of Democracies argues that Washington should implement a comprehensive land blockade. They note that moving cargo overland's already four times more expensive than shipping by sea. The strategy relies on maintaining isolation. They want to keep the pressure on until Tehran either surrenders its nuclear ambitions or faces annihilation with no chance of survival,.

But the Iranian government looks at that isolation and says the path to ending the conflict's already clearly laid out. Tehran's provided a concrete, viable mechanism to halt fighting and restore maritime navigation through the Strait of Hormuz within seven days. The Iranian foreign minister insists that everything's now prepared to implement the truce. That's provided the United States demonstrates genuine seriousness about reaching a deal. The Iranian president argues that it's unacceptable for foreign adversaries to benefit from the shipping lane while simultaneously using it to impose their aggression upon his country. He adds that the permanent deployment of hostile fleets and expanding the war won't lead to peace. Iran's foreign minister maintains that the country's never closed the door to diplomacy. But they'll never back down from their rights. The leadership in Tehran insists they'll never bow their heads or bend at the knee to American coercion. They maintain that Washington's behavior over the past two years provides no reason to trust its diplomatic overtures. Meaning any agreement must strictly respect Iranian sovereignty,. The Iranian president maintains that Tehran isn't seeking a nuclear weapon. But it'll never surrender its peaceful nuclear knowledge. Because the country doesn't wish to continue the war, the decision on whether to end the fighting now rests solely with the American administration.

That decision's exactly what pragmatic diplomats and regional allies are trying to force. They approach the standoff with a focus on immediate economic survival. An estimated one-third of Persian Gulf oil's currently missing from global markets. A war economy under strain's pushed the Qatari government into a massive budget deficit. Two damaged production trains knocked out seventeen percent of its liquefied natural gas capacity. The mere prospect of a truce caused crude oil prices to drop below one hundred dollars a barrel in Asian trading. Stephen Innes at Quintex Intel notes that the diplomatic contact in New York matters. It shifts the market from pure escalation pricing toward a genuine diplomatic process. Even if a final deal still looks distant. French President Emmanuel Macron's pushing for diplomatic solutions that would allow container ships and oil tankers to transit the strait safely. That's even without a comprehensive peace agreement,. A French diplomatic source says the country wants to work with the Americans and its partners on a Security Council resolution guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the strait. The Qatari prime minister argues that arrangements leaving any state permanently exposed to insecurity will inevitably fail. And a presidential adviser in the United Arab Emirates argues that discussions about regional stability and development should take place at an Iranian-Arab level. Not just between Washington and Tehran.

So the immediate relief of global energy markets now depends on a narrow diplomatic window in New York. Reopening the strait requires bridging the gap between an American demand for total nuclear capitulation and an Iranian demand for complete maritime access.

Late last week, Norway and the UK were preparing criminal penalties and import bans on Israeli settlement commerce. And now nineteen US Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to sanction entities building in the E1 corridor. The Israeli finance minister formally announced the approval of the E1 settlement project back in August 2025.

That legislation comes down to geography. The lawmakers driving this bill argue that building in the strategic E1 corridor severs the West Bank. They say it destroys the geographic viability of a Palestinian state. The massive project includes three thousand four hundred and one housing units east of Jerusalem. For the senators sponsoring the measure, building those homes would physically cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the territory. It would permanently divide the land and threaten any future peace agreement. Because of that threat, and the escalating violence from extremist settlers, this camp argues that economic penalties are now required. They want to halt what amounts to de facto annexation. The legislation has the backing of eighteen Democratic senators. That represents forty-two percent of the party's caucus. They argue that foreign businesses, financial institutions, and individuals who choose to facilitate this construction must understand the risk. They could lose access to the American financial system. In the House, a related measure to prevent West Bank violence has gathered one hundred and seventy-three Democratic co-sponsors. Senator Chris Coons argues that Palestinian civilians face a campaign of devastation and fear from violent extremist settlers. So he says the United States must send a strong message that this behavior's unacceptable. For decades, presidents from both parties have warned successive Israeli governments that building in E1 was unacceptable. With this bill, the senators are declaring that advancing the housing plans crosses a clear red line. And advocacy groups backing the legislation argue that an era's over. Right-wing Israeli governments can't ignore demands from Washington and expect politicians to simply fall in line.

The officials facing those demands see a completely different motive. For Israeli officials and defenders of the Jewish communities in the West Bank, these Western trade bans and sanctions represent discriminatory double standards. They argue that international blacklists unfairly single out Israel through biased multilateral mechanisms. They point to the United Nations database released in 2020. That list now holds two hundred and fourteen firms. Israel's diplomatic mission calls the list a distorted tool. They say it was created by a deeply flawed body with an automatic majority against the country. And an unreleased draft memo from the American State Department characterized the allied import restrictions as drawing directly from the playbook of the antisemitic boycott movement. Those on the right argue that the 1949 armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states that attacked it went out of their way to state that the lines they drew were without prejudice. When Britain withdrew from the Mandate west of the Jordan River in May 1948, title passed to Israel at the moment of independence. Today, out of roughly half a million Israeli residents living across the Green Line, only seventy are accused of violent organizing against Palestinians. US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee calls settler violence an act of terror. But he calls the boycotts discrimination against the Jewish people. Finally, this side warns that boycotts and trade restrictions actively disrupt mutual economic coexistence. They harm ordinary local workers. Tens of thousands of Arabs depend for their livelihoods on Jewish-owned businesses in the territory. They earn wages that run two to five times higher than what's available in the Palestinian economy. Israel's ambassador to the Netherlands argues that rigid targeting of settlement goods inadvertently harms Samaritans and Palestinians who rely on shared commerce. It destroys genuine symbols of everyday normalcy and regional cooperation.

Those businesses will just have to wait and see. The immediate fate of the Senate bill rests on the American legislative calendar. The measure faces virtually no chance of passing before the November midterm elections. But the expanding architecture of international trade bans and financial penalties is already forcing Israeli export businesses to navigate a shrinking European market.

The deadline for global compliance with the sweeping American aviation sanctions against Iran has arrived. This comes a week after the United States launched those measures alongside an atomic energy referral. The Treasury designated September twenty-third as the final date for international companies to cut commercial ties with Iranian airlines. And that follows a September eighth sanctions package. That one targeted thirty-six individuals and groups tied to the country's aviation sector. Washington set this deadline to ground the entire civil fleet worldwide. They're doing that by threatening secondary sanctions against any global companies doing business with them.

Those threats are working. For the US and allied policymakers backing these measures, the secondary sanctions have successfully paralyzed Iran's international flight networks. The American action has attained over eighty percent of its target, despite not reaching a total shutdown. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent estimates that probably more than eighty or ninety percent of external flights have been shut down. He openly questioned how their representatives at the United Nations are going to get home. Donald Trump has labeled the aggressive expansion of these penalties an economic D-Day. Three Turkish carriers canceled all flights to and from the Islamic Republic. That's the first major domino to fall. Turkish Airlines and AJet have removed all Iran flights from their booking platforms through March two thousand and twenty-seven. The compliance extends across the Caucasus. Five of the twenty-seven airlines sanctioned by the Treasury operate flights to Georgia and will no longer be permitted to serve those routes. Ambassador to China David Perdue says Washington made it very clear to Beijing weeks ago that any help given to Tehran is totally unacceptable. That covers direct or indirect support. It includes intelligence, parts, or military equipment.

The leadership on the ground views those aviation bans differently. They argue the bans can't force them to surrender and will only harden domestic resolve. President Massoud Pezeshkian insists the resistance of the people will only intensify in the face of sanctions, mounting pressure and growing intimidation. Rather than forcing submission or nuclear concessions, the leadership maintains that the economic pressure campaign simply deepens the public's determination to withstand American coercion. They plan to continue their current trajectory. Their response to neighboring states closing their skies is a threat of reciprocal disruption across the Middle East. Mohammad Mokhber is a senior adviser to the supreme leader. He warns that if they can't fly and receive airport services, no country in the region will have that possibility either. He denounces the flight suspensions as alignment with America. The head of the supreme national security council is Mohsen Rezaei. He adds that if a country cooperates with the United States, its airports will no longer be able to operate flights. The stated strategy is that regional flight is either free for all or for no one. Under a diplomatic proposal from Tehran, fighting across all fronts, including Lebanon, would cease within seven days. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi says the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened on the last day of that phased truce. For the government, lifting the maritime blockades and removing the economic penalties are absolute prerequisites before broader negotiations can even begin. The flight bans only delay that process.

But right now, the immediate result is a severe contraction of civilian travel and trade into and out of the country. With the major regional transit hubs closed to their carriers, the aviation sector is effectively grounded. That leaves passengers stranded. It forces the remaining cross-border traffic onto slower land routes.

On September twenty-second, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus finalized a three-billion-euro missile defense network. But the friction has now shifted to the Great Sea Interconnector. That's an undersea power cable meant to link the three countries' electricity grids. On September eleventh, the Greek station at Lemnos issued a navigational warning for a ship to carry out cable maintenance in the Aegean Sea beginning two days later. That drew an immediate red line from Ankara. They declared the cable cannot cross the seabed without their explicit approval.

That approval matters because the Turkish government considers the seabed firmly under its jurisdiction. So any infrastructure crossing it requires their permission. The Defense Ministry said international law mandates prior coordination with Turkey before laying cables, installing pipelines, or conducting scientific research on its continental shelf. That requirement rests on the formal definition of its shelf submitted to the United Nations in two thousand twenty. And that followed a bilateral maritime boundary agreement signed with Libya the year before. The government actively contests any Greek project trying to establish sovereignty over disputed geographical formations in the Aegean. When Athens advanced a renewable energy framework in August, Turkey formally objected. They argued international treaties never transferred those waters to Greece. The same principle applies to military deployments Ankara views as encroaching on its maritime rights. Following the defense agreement, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan directly warned Athens. His phrase was to abandon the wrong path of arming its islands.

The other side looks at those warnings and argues Washington must back a defensive axis against Turkish attempts to redraw the map. Regional partners are already expanding joint military cooperation to safeguard their territory. In two thousand twenty-four, Greece joined the F-thirty-five global alliance to strengthen how their militaries work together. That was followed by the Achilles Shield agreement to modernize the Greek military with Israeli-manufactured anti-missile and anti-drone systems. And the alignment is deepening across the eastern Mediterranean. The defense ministers of Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt met in Cairo on September twenty-second to advance their security ties. Those nations established an energy dialogue with the United States in two thousand nineteen. They formalized it this June with a dedicated energy center. In March, Turkey based combat aircraft in northern Cyprus for the first time. By August, Turkish aircraft and drones committed twenty-five airspace violations in a single day. At the same time, Ankara relocated a brigade of two thousand commandos directly opposite the Greek island of Samos.

That buildup surrounds the immediate standoff over the power cable. It leaves the maintenance ship waiting for a clear path to resume its seabed surveys. Moving forward requires one of two things. It takes a quiet diplomatic accommodation over maritime boundaries. Or it takes a decision by the allied navies to physically escort civilian infrastructure projects through contested waters.

Six years after Morocco joined the Abraham Accords, the two governments have formally agreed to upgrade their diplomatic missions. Back in September, Rabat and Jerusalem signed off on turning their liaison offices into full embassies. They're exchanging ambassadors. And they're advancing treaties on investment and double taxation. When we last checked in on the twenty-second of September, the two countries were preparing for this upgrade despite domestic protests in Morocco. Now the deal is signed. It cements a relationship that began with normalization in two thousand and twenty.

That formal step is how Moroccan political analyst and civil society expert Aimane Cherragui reads the situation. For him, the embassy upgrade is the institutional completion of an unfinished cooperation. His case is that the core bilateral pillars survived the intense stress test of the Gaza war. Diplomacy and security cooperation endured. And back in March two thousand and twenty-four, those operational channels allowed Rabat to route humanitarian aid into Gaza through Israel. The strategic partnership had already delivered major prizes. Like Israel formally recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in July two thousand and twenty-three. Now, the September agreement institutionalizes what survived. He takes the argument further. He points out that the relationship rests on ties older than the Abraham Accords. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis trace their family descent to Morocco. And for decades they traveled there for religious holidays and pilgrimages without official relations. Morocco's nurtured that bond domestically. It explicitly recognized its Hebraic heritage in its two thousand and eleven national constitution. The expanded direct flights will make these people-to-people ties easier to sustain. Israel's foreign minister says he's excited to welcome more Moroccans to the country. But that travel goes mostly one way. Before October seventh, tens of thousands of Israeli travelers visited Morocco annually, while far fewer Moroccans traveled in the opposite direction. Cherragui argues that remembering Moroccan Jews isn't exactly the same thing as Moroccans and Israelis knowing one another today.

The Islamist opposition sees that public mood differently. They argue that popular discontent must force a reversal of normalization. The Justice and Development Party just mounted a major political comeback. They surged from thirteen parliamentary seats after the two thousand and twenty-one election to fifty-four seats in a vote where turnout reached just thirty-eight percent. Party leadership is attacking the government's ties with Israel. They're warning rally attendees about the dangers of Zionism in Morocco. Their calculation relies on popular mobilization to break the alliance. The party's leader argues that the king doesn't like to act against his people, and that hard work will pressure the monarch to close the Israeli embassy.

But right now, the formalization of the embassies locks the diplomatic architecture in place at the state level. The challenge for Rabat is managing the domestic cost of an alliance that its security establishment relies on. All while the opposition tests whether street pressure can still constrain the palace's foreign policy.

The Houthi movement has seized Yemen's southern Red Sea coast. By September eleventh, the militia took the strategic port city of Mokha. And they advanced into the highlands around Taiz and Lahij. That displaced a hundred and thirty thousand people and left at least seven hundred dead. The offensive was paired with a drone strike that damaged the twelve-hundred-kilometer Saudi East-West pipeline. Saudi air defenses also intercepted a barrage of six ballistic missiles. Fired toward the kingdom in a single day.

The Saudi government and its defense partners argue the kingdom has to secure its territory and energy corridors by activating a collective security umbrella. On August seventh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement. It's a pact stipulating that an armed attack against one member is to be treated as an attack against all three. Following a ministerial meeting in Istanbul to institutionalize the alliance, Pakistan's military spokesman declared Islamabad fully stands with the kingdom and will go to any extent to defend it. Alongside this regional coalition, Western allies are deploying targeted military support to protect critical Red Sea export hubs. The British government agreed to supply a Royal Air Force Voyager aircraft for air-to-air refueling to assist Saudi defensive missions. Its defense minister described that move as a necessity for British national security. The French president also announced Paris will send soldiers, radar, and air defense systems to the Saudi port city of Yanbu. Strictly to safeguard energy infrastructure rather than to enter the wider war. This military coordination is backed by demands from international bodies to halt the disruption of global navigation. The Group of Seven leaders issued a joint statement. They called on the Houthi movement to immediately cease all military actions. And to end its threats against civilian shipping to allow a return to the political process. The United Nations Security Council followed with a rare unanimous declaration. It condemned the escalating strikes on Saudi civilian sites and energy infrastructure in the strongest terms.

But Allison Minor at the Atlantic Council notes Saudi Arabia failed to do as much as it could've to prepare its military posture during the years of relative diplomatic calm. A proposed twenty-four-billion-dollar American sale of forty-eight F-thirty-five stealth fighters won't change the dynamic on the ground. Because twelve years of Saudi air campaigns have consistently failed to suppress the Houthi movement or halt its coastal advances. The new alliances offer no real combat guarantee. The Mecca pact provides security coordination between middle powers, arms sales, and training. But it stops well short of an active military defense in the way Washington has historically provided for its partners. At the same time, the United States remains reluctant to intervene directly inside Yemen. The American president reversed a planned military strike on Houthi targets at the last minute on September twentieth despite repeated requests from Riyadh. Establishing actual deterrence requires ground operations and mending fractured regional partnerships. The geopolitical rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that began in two thousand and nineteen has left Riyadh trying to regroup. They're managing a deeply divided anti-Houthi coalition on their own. A vice chair of Yemen's ruling Presidential Leadership Council says aerial campaigns are important. But supporting Yemeni government forces on the ground is necessary to end the threat.

The Houthi advances have effectively closed off Saudi Arabia's primary bypass routes for its energy exports. Riyadh is now left to manage a heavily armed adversary on its southern border. All while navigating defense partnerships that offer equipment and training but no direct combat troops.

Lebanese officials just met with international leaders in Paris to lobby for a new multinational force in southern Lebanon. This push comes as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon prepares to expire. Roughly seven thousand five hundred peacekeepers from forty-six countries have staffed that mission since the two thousand and six war. And this diplomatic scramble follows a major shift on the ground. Israel seized five strategic positions across southern Lebanon after Hezbollah entered the war in twenty twenty-three. So the question of what replaces those UN forces is dividing all the capitals involved.

For the Lebanese government and its European allies, an international presence under UN auspices remains absolutely vital. They need it to maintain stability and prevent an uncontrolled security vacuum in the south. The UN Security Council resolved in August twenty twenty-five to cap the current mandate at the close of December twenty twenty-six. That leads into a one-year exit process. Fearing what follows, Lebanon's prime minister is urgently seeking a replacement. He stated that his country's priorities are strengthening its military capabilities and ensuring a continued international presence as the mission expires. Any replacement force, in this view, has to focus on training and assisting the national military rather than initiating combat operations. The United Nations has drafted proposals for a new deployment. That ranges from two thousand to five thousand personnel. More than ten member states have already indicated they're ready to supply troops to a subsequent international mission. The European Union's foreign policy chief says the goal of this deployment is to strengthen the Lebanese armed forces. They want to build the state's ability to provide security across its territory. And the Shiite community accounts for approximately one third of Lebanon's overall population.

But Israeli and American defense hawks look at those decades of UN peacekeeping and see something entirely ineffective. They argue it completely failed to prevent Hezbollah from entrenching its military presence. The original UNIFIL mission was established in nineteen seventy-eight in the wake of an Israeli invasion. That mission has always been an irritant for Israel. And under American pressure, the UN Security Council extended its mandate only until the end of the year. The case made by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is that Lebanese authorities consistently avoid confronting armed factions. Instead, they rely on diplomacy to evade accountability. After Israel eliminated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in twenty twenty-four, Beirut was handed a historic chance to wrest back sovereignty and enforce its own laws. The result of that refusal is a depopulated security zone. And that prevents half a million Lebanese civilians from returning to their border villages.

So the immediate deadline is the end of the year. That's when the current mandate expires. Until a new framework is agreed upon and deployed, the border remains a military zone. And the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced on both sides will continue waiting to go home.

That's the view from here. Crosswinds is a Daily Lion production. Don't forget to tune in to the other Daily Lion shows: Sixty One, All Fronts, and Tribe & State. See you next Tuesday.