Iran Declares a Restricted Sea Zone Outside Hormuz After United States Strikes Three Oil Tankers

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran will soon declare a restricted maritime zone stretching from the line where the United States naval presence begins, through the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, and into the Persian Gulf. Ships that enter without coordinating with Iranian authorities will face Iranian measures against their insurance cover and their right to future passage, Rezaei said. He added that Iran and Oman are preparing a new corridor through the strait, with entry and exit points fixed by agreement between the two governments and administered by Iran, according to Xinhua.

The announcement followed a weekend in which United States forces struck three Iranian oil tankers, which Washington described as retaliation for Iranian ballistic missile attacks on American warships. Iran then attacked vessels linked to the United States. Brent crude rose toward $97 a barrel on Monday, extending gains from the previous week.

Iranian officials described the escalation as a change in the terms of the conflict. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the "rules of the game" had changed and that any further attack on Iranian interests would draw a faster and more painful response, The Hindu reported. The same coverage recorded Israeli evacuation orders for an area of southern Lebanon ahead of strikes, extending the fighting beyond the Gulf.

Financial markets separated the two sides of the conflict cleanly. Crude and freight risk rose, while bitcoin fell by nearly 1% to about $79,900, CoinDesk reported. That split has repeated throughout this conflict. Bitcoin, marketed as a form of digital hard money, trades in line with liquidity-sensitive risk assets when geopolitical stress arrives, while the physical commodity at the center of the dispute reprices immediately.

An insurance-based restriction is a different instrument from a blockade. It does not require Iran to close the strait or to sink a ship. It requires underwriters and charterers to decide whether a voyage is still insurable at an acceptable premium, and that decision is made in London, Singapore and Dubai rather than in the Gulf itself.