Iran Codifies Hormuz Blockade Into Law

Valiollah Bayati, spokesman for the Majlis Committee on Councils and Internal Affairs, told Tasnim that lawmakers had approved the general outline of the Strategic Action Plan for Ensuring Security and Development of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf — and locked seven of its fourteen articles. One of those articles bans passage of facilities and equipment owned by the United States, Israel, and other countries Tehran designates as hostile. The rest of the bill is scheduled for committee next week. This is not a full-floor statute yet. It is the moment a wartime practice starts acquiring a legal spine.

IRGC Navy Rear Adm. Ali Ozmaei said the same day that control of movements is complete and decisive, and that reality lives in the field, not in U.S. communiqués. Kpler counted nine commodity vessels through Hormuz on Thursday — above Wednesday’s five, still below August’s daily average of twelve. Upfront traffic on Friday looked thinner still after attacks on two ADNOC ships Thursday evening and a separate UKMTO-reported drone strike on an outbound tanker. The waterway that cheap drones closed without a classic naval blockade is now being written into Iranian law as if the choke were a governing principle, not a campaign.

Why Oil Is Going Up Today

Brent climbed above $88 on Friday. WTI cleared $82. That is the consequence, not a second story. Crude is not discovering a new war. It is repricing a strait that peace tapes keep trying to un-price.

Markets have done this before. The Versailles MOU sent Brent toward $79 while Hormuz stayed cautious and Israel stayed off the invitation list — the gap we flagged when the MOU priced peace the waterway had not delivered. Swiss talks that survived strain still jolted oil. Equities have priced in peace while the corridor barely functioned. Friday’s bid is the unwind of that habit: if parliament is converting hostile-flag exclusion into statute, a ceasefire that restores 20% of global oil and LNG transit looks further away, not closer.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promised measures next week of economic isolation the world has never seen, paired with a continued blockade of Iranian ports. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the U.S. Navy can sustain its side indefinitely. That is a dual blockade hardening into policy on both shores. Oman-mediated shipping-lane language can sit in “final drafting” and still fail to reopen insurance, pilots, and owners. Statute is how Tehran makes a pause more expensive to sign.

What Codification Changes

A drone swarm is reversible in a night. A fourteen-article plan that treats U.S. and Israeli transit as a prohibited use of the strait is a negotiating red line with a committee vote attached. Remaining articles next week — penalties, revenues, maritime-zone tweaks — will tell whether Tehran is writing a wartime ordinance or a fee-and-permit regime for whoever is left. Either version collides with Washington’s insistence on uncharged passage.

The macro channel is unchanged and tighter. Fed easing still runs through Hormuz, not through a single soft CPI print. A $88 Brent bid is how that trap shows up in gasoline and in duration. The accidental climate lever nobody asked for — forced substitution away from a jammed Gulf — remains the long shadow of a choke nobody voted for at a summit.

Watch three clocks. First, whether the other seven articles pass as a hostile-flag ban or as a toll-and-permit machine. Second, whether Kpler’s daily count stays in single digits after the ADNOC hits. Third, whether Bessent’s next-week isolation package and any Oman draft can coexist — or whether oil keeps answering the legal question the peace tape keeps skipping. Treat Friday as one story: the blockade is being written down, and $88 is the market reading the ink.