Doha Round Advances US-Iran Hormuz MoU, Next Talks After Khamenei Funeral

Great-power mediation in the Gulf has swung before: the 1988 U.S. Operation Earnest Will convoy programme temporarily calmed the Iran-Iraq tanker war, only to unravel within months, and the 2015 JCPOA promised a nuclear thaw that collapsed by 2018. Today’s Doha track echoes those cycles—technical de-escalation first, strategic questions later—while featuring new brokers (Qatar, Pakistan) that reflect a region diversifying away from exclusive U.S. security tutelage. If Iran succeeds in extracting recognition of its Hormuz prerogatives and partial sanctions relief without direct U.S. contact, it reinforces a century-long trend of middle powers exploiting multipolar competition to loosen Western control of chokepoints. Conversely, failure would likely return the Gulf to the pattern of episodic flare-ups seen since Britain’s 1971 withdrawal. On a 100-year horizon, the episode matters less for any single clause than for testing whether informal, mediator-driven diplomacy can supplant the collapsing post-Cold-War order in one of the world’s critical energy arteries.