The United States is partnering with Bahrain and other Gulf Cooperation Council states on a new U.N Security Council draft resolution requiring Iran to cease laying mines and collecting tolls in the Strait of Hormuz and stop its attacks on commercial ships attempting to pass through the critical waterway.
The measure would require Iran to stop laying sea mines, disclose their locations and cooperate with international efforts to remove them. It also calls for establishing a humanitarian maritime corridor in coordination with the United Nations to ensure the continued flow of aid shipments.
Over 80 of its agencies use shipping lanes in the area, including to transport needed items to crisis zones in East Africa.
Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters on Monday that the United States expects “a large coalition of countries that agree.”
“Regardless of a conflict, or regardless of the parties of the conflict, or regardless of how they feel about it, a country cannot lay mines in international waterways, and cannot use international waterways as a revenue source or attempt to charge international shipping tolling,” Waltz said.
“That not only applies to the Strait of Hormuz, that applies to any international waterway—the Strait of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, the Bering Strait,” he added, noting Iran is in violation of the U.N. Law of the Sea, Geneva Convention and U.N. Charter.
“This is an incredibly important precedent that we are setting here, that this is unacceptable and it’s illegal,” Waltz said.
The resolution would require Iran to immediately disclose the numbers and locations of the sea mines it has placed down and work with the international community to remove them.
While Washington and Manama are co-drafting the resolution, it was written with input from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
“They are all partners in this effort and will drive this critical resolution forward,” Waltz said.
The U.S. ambassador said the proposal is intentionally more narrowly focused than a previous resolution that failed last month after vetoes from Russia and China, which argued the earlier measure unfairly targeted Iran despite backing from 11 council members.
Gulf Arab states have also been engaging with Moscow and Beijing—two Iranian allies—for weeks on these issues, according to Waltz.
“The indiscriminate laying of mines is just wholly unacceptable and should be, in our view, non-controversial in terms of calling on Iran to stop, calling on Iran to identify where they are and then also the international community having the authorization to help us clean that up,” he said.
