By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist The initial justification for the war launched by Israel and the U.S. against Iran was Iran’s nuclear program, its uranium enrichment capacity, and the goal of limiting Iran’s strategic deterrence.
However, at this stage, the issues determining the war’s fate are no longer these; the focus has shifted to who will establish hegemony over the Strait of Hormuz.
For this reason, as I have written repeatedly in Uwidata, the likelihood of the war ending without one side establishing supremacy in the Strait of Hormuz is becoming increasingly slim.
The agreement, hastily presented to Donald Trump for his signature on June 17 during the G7 Summit, merely postponed the war’s most critical issue rather than resolving it, and the current situation clearly demonstrates that the crisis has become even more intractable as it has been pushed aside.
Misconceptions Arising from the So-Called Agreement
The U.S. believed—or at least wanted to believe—that this agreement would end Iran’s de facto veto power over the strait.
Iran, on the other hand, believed it had secured an environment where it could maintain its position as long as it did not relinquish its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz—within the framework of its own security approach—while U.S. military presence and Israeli regional operations continued.
For these reasons, the signed agreement was not a peace treaty that eliminated the causes of the war, but rather a ceasefire arrangement in which the parties ascribed different meanings to the same text.
This is where the fundamental problem arose.
Immediately afterward, the consequences of these differing interpretations began to manifest on the ground, as I had previously written on the pages of Uwidata.
While the U.S. characterized Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels as a clear violation of the ceasefire, Iran claimed it was complying with the agreement by framing its own actions as retaliation for U.S. operations targeting Iran’s coastline and Israel’s ongoing regional attacks.
All these developments inevitably turned the Strait of Hormuz into the de facto main front of the war.
The war will not end until supremacy is established in the Strait of Hormuz!
Today, the fundamental problem facing both sides is not so much the complete annihilation of each other’s military capabilities, but rather their inability to establish a sustainable control mechanism over the Strait of Hormuz.
From Iran’s perspective, the Strait of Hormuz is not an arena where it can defeat the U.S. militarily through a symmetrical naval battle. On the other hand, however, Iran’s strategy has never been—and is not—based on defeating the U.S. Navy in the classical sense.
Iran’s advantage appears to lie in its ability to combine coastal defense systems, anti-ship missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, high-speed boats, sea mines, shore-based missile units, and the narrow maneuvering spaces afforded by the geography. While this capability may not be sufficient to completely close the Strait of Hormuz, it appears to be enough to make safe and continuous commercial transit unsustainable.
The U.S., meanwhile, is aware that it cannot declare the war over without eliminating this threat.
From the U.S. perspective, the issue is not merely Iran’s attack on one or a few commercial vessels.
The real issue is that Iran is able to exercise de facto veto power at one of the world’s most critical energy choke points, despite the U.S. military presence there.
For this reason, it is no longer enough for the U.S. to simply reopen the Strait of Hormuz; it must also be militarily demonstrated that Iran cannot close the strait again.
This is precisely where the war has reached a stalemate.
Iran believes that if it loses its ability to exert pressure on the Strait of Hormuz, it will lose the war; the U.S., on the other hand, believes that if it allows this natural sea lane—which was already open before the war—to remain under Iranian control, it will lose its global hegemony.
Consequently, a retreat by either side would not merely constitute a military concession but would also carry significant implications for the future of the new global architecture.
In short, in this equation, it seems impossible for the war to end without one of the parties establishing clear and sustainable superiority in Hormuz.
The threshold for a regional war is being crossed
The conflict’s escalation into a regional war is no longer merely a theoretical possibility.
This can be attributed not only to Iran’s targeting of U.S. objectives but also to the fact that the U.S.’s entire military infrastructure in the region is located on the territory of numerous countries.
Iran’s attacks on these facilities are increasingly raising the risk of dragging host countries into the war against their will, and in my view, this makes that outcome inevitable in the coming days.
The fact that Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE have become targets to varying degrees highlights the fragility of the Gulf security architecture, even if these countries do not wish to engage in direct war with Iran, attacks on U.S. bases have drawn their airspace, ports, and energy infrastructure into the conflict, raising the question of how much longer they can hold out—a question that has now reached its limit.
The Israel factor cannot be left out of the equation
On the other hand, despite all these developments and factors, it would be a major oversight to view this war solely as a crisis between Washington and Tehran.
Israel is one of the key actors at the military and political center of the conflict, and the fact that the U.S. has accepted Israel’s demands—including targeting Iran’s nuclear program, limiting Iran’s missile capabilities, and weakening the Houthis, Hezbollah, and other regional proxy forces—keeps Israel firmly at the center of the war.
After all, the stated reason for the war’s outbreak is the U.S.’s so-called “guarantee of Israel’s security.”
Consequently, the idea that the U.S. might reach an agreement with Iran while excluding Israel’s operations from that framework seems far from being a sustainable solution.
Indeed, Israel’s influence on the war is not merely military; it also encompasses global implications and reactions.
Conclusion: The Outcome of the War Will Be Determined in the Strait of Hormuz
This entire picture shows that the war has shifted away from its initial justifications and has turned into a power struggle centered on the Strait of Hormuz.
At this juncture, either one of the parties must establish clear military and political superiority in the Strait of Hormuz, or the parties must bring this struggle for supremacy to an end through an international arrangement. Otherwise, every ceasefire will merely be the postponed beginning of a new attack.
As long as Iran continues to use the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic leverage tool against U.S. global hegemony, and the U.S. continues to view this as a challenge to its own global hegemony, the war will not end.
Therefore, the fate of the current war will not be determined solely in Tehran, Washington, or Tel Aviv.
In other words, as I have been writing here since the very first day of the war—even when no one was discussing it—the fate of the war will now be determined in the Strait of Hormuz.
And at this juncture, the greatest risk is no longer that the parties do not want an all-out war. The real risk is that a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz—which has taken on such strategic significance that neither side can back down—will now trigger the dynamics of a regional war.