The UN Security Council is deadlocked over two competing draft resolutions on the Strait of Hormuz, with neither commanding the votes to pass. Bahrain's draft, backed by the United States and the United Kingdom, invokes Chapter VII of the UN Charter and would authorise member states to use "all necessary means" to secure passage through the strait. Russia's alternative calls for negotiations and a ceasefire but contains no enforcement mechanism. Both drafts are expected to fail, leaving the world's most important energy chokepoint without an international legal framework for reopening it.
The Bahrain resolution is the more consequential of the two. It would authorise countries or naval coalitions to use military force to "repress, neutralise and deter attempts to close, obstruct or otherwise interfere with international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz," and demands that Iran "immediately cease all attacks against merchant and commercial vessels." The language mirrors the Chapter VII resolutions that authorised the Gulf War in 1991 and the Libya intervention in 2011.
Why It Will Fail
Russia and China have both signalled they will veto the Bahrain draft. Moscow's ambassador to the UN called it "a blank cheque for military escalation" and argued that authorising force while active negotiations are supposedly underway would be "reckless and counterproductive." Beijing has been more restrained in its public statements but has made clear privately that it will not support any resolution that could be used to justify an expansion of the war.
The Russian alternative, meanwhile, calls for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" and "good-faith negotiations under UN auspices" but contains no enforcement mechanism and no consequences for non-compliance. The United States has dismissed it as "performative" and the UK ambassador called it "a resolution designed to change nothing." It will fail because the US and UK will veto it, completing the deadlock.
Iran's Selective Opening
While the Security Council argues, Iran has implemented its own solution. Tehran announced last week that commercial vessels from "non-hostile nations" may transit the strait freely, provided they request permission from the Iranian Navy 48 hours in advance. Ships flying the flags of the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE are explicitly excluded. In practice, this means Iranian allies — China, Russia, India to some extent — can receive oil shipments, while Western economies cannot.
The selective opening is strategically brilliant. It allows Iran to claim it is not blockading international shipping — it is merely exercising sovereignty over its territorial waters. It fractures the international coalition against Iran by giving major oil importers like China and India an incentive to oppose Western enforcement action. And it creates a two-tier energy market in which countries that support Iran get oil at pre-war prices and countries that oppose it face the full impact of the supply shock.
The UK Summit Proposal
Britain has attempted to break the deadlock by offering to host an international security summit to develop a "viable, collective plan" for reopening the strait. The proposal, announced by the Foreign Secretary on Tuesday, would bring together maritime nations, energy importers, and Gulf states to negotiate a framework outside the Security Council's paralysis. It is a tacit admission that the UN system has failed and that an alternative diplomatic architecture is needed.
Whether the summit materialises depends on whether enough countries are willing to commit to a framework that Iran will reject and Russia will oppose. The strait remains effectively closed to Western shipping, and no resolution — at the UN or elsewhere — is going to change that without either Iran's consent or a military operation to force it open. The Security Council's deadlock is not the problem. It is the symptom of a world that cannot agree on whether Iran's closure of the strait is an act of war or an exercise of sovereignty.