Hormuz: Tehran and Doha put a timetable on reopening, and Washington must pay the price

According to Al Jazeera, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, says talks are under way and that Iran and Qatar have agreed on a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days. The condition attached: that the United States meet Tehran's demands. Al Jazeera's live coverage, in the version we have, does not detail these conditions, the American response, or the recent human toll. We will not invent them. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

First, what the summary says between the lines. A strait closes, a strait reopens: by decision of states, not by the grace of "international law". The word "conditions" is the most important one in the sentence. It means that the passage of ships has become a bargaining chip. Cui bono? Not the crews, not the populations enduring the war, not the consumers whom energy prices will hit. Those who profit from a locked corridor are the actors who can hold out longer than the others, and those who sell weapons to keep it open or keep it shut.

The Leninist framework serves a simple purpose here. In its monopoly phase, capitalism seeks markets, raw materials and routes, and the great powers fight over them by force when negotiation no longer suffices. Sanctions, alliances, arms contracts: the political envelope of an economic rivalry. Hormuz is that rivalry reduced to a bottleneck. Whoever controls the passage controls part of the oil and gas flows on which banks, insurers and industrialists worldwide depend.

Qatar's role deserves attention. A declared mediator and a gas exporter, it is not an arbiter above the fray. A Gulf state that facilitates the reopening of a strait through which its own cargoes pass is not practising diplomatic charity: it is defending its revenues. We will be told of "good offices". Let us read instead "enlightened self-interest". The same goes for Washington, whose "Iranian conditions" must be weighed against its own strategic calculations and those of its companies.

The state, Lenin reminded us, is an instrument in the service of a ruling class. Governments speak of security, freedom of navigation, defence of the homeland. These formulas cover very material interests. Meanwhile, those who pay for the war are always the same: soldiers, civilians, workers whose wages erode as the barrel soars. We await confirmation of the death toll before saying more, and we will say it with the restraint it demands.

What remains unknown: the exact content of the conditions, Washington's official position, the reliability of a "two-day" timetable announced by one party. An announcement is not an agreement. Until ships pass, it is war communication. The real question remains structural: who, in the end, cashes in the price of peace as they cashed in the price of war? (our translation)