- War context, not instability: Gulf–Europe relations are being reshaped by an ongoing, contained war dynamic between the US–Israel axis and Iran, with direct implications for global security.
- Hormuz as a pressure point: The Strait of Hormuz has shifted from a passive chokepoint to an active strategic lever, affecting energy flows, shipping risk and market stability.
- Why United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea matters: UNCLOS underpins freedom of navigation; challenging it in Hormuz is not just a legal issue, but a test of the rules-based order at sea.
The message delivered in Brussels by Jasem Albudaiwi was framed in diplomatic language. Its substance was not. Relations between the Gulf and Europe, he argued before the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, must move beyond consultation towards a more operational partnership. The timing explains the shift along the Indo-Mediterranean region.
What officials still describe as “regional instability” has, in practice, taken the shape of a contained but ongoing war dynamic between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other. Direct exchanges have ebbed, but the strategic environment remains defined by deterrence, retaliation risk and the persistent threat of escalation across multiple theatres — from the Levant to the Gulf.
In this setting, the Gulf is no longer a peripheral concern for Europe. It sits at the intersection of energy security, maritime trade and supply chain resilience. Disruptions in the region are no longer absorbed locally; they transmit globally and almost immediately.
This is most visible in the Strait of Hormuz. Long treated as a structural chokepoint, it has in recent months become an active lever of strategic pressure. Iranian signalling around access, combined with US naval posture and heightened military alert across the Gulf, has altered the risk calculus for commercial shipping. Even without a formal closure, the mere perception of insecurity has been sufficient to affect traffic flows, insurance costs and energy markets.
Against this backdrop, Albudaiwi’s explicit reference to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is telling. It is not a legal footnote but a political anchor.
UNCLOS codifies the principle that straits used for international navigation — including Hormuz — must remain open under the regime of transit passage. In practical terms, it limits the ability of coastal states to impede or selectively restrict maritime traffic. The convention does not eliminate power politics, but it defines the boundary between coercion and illegality.
That boundary is now under pressure.
The current crisis is therefore not only about military balance, but about whether established maritime norms retain their constraining force in a more contested geopolitical environment. Efforts to condition access to Hormuz, even indirectly, test the credibility of a rules-based order at sea that underpins global trade.
For Europe, the implications are immediate. A significant share of its energy imports and a critical portion of its trade with Asia depend on the uninterrupted flow through maritime corridors linked to the Gulf. The vulnerability is structural, not episodic.
This is where the GCC’s call for a more “practical partnership” acquires strategic meaning. It points towards closer coordination not only on diplomacy, but on maritime security, infrastructure protection and crisis management. In other words, towards a partial externalisation of European economic security into the Gulf theatre.
The return of great-power confrontation at sea has revived an old reality: maritime law matters most when it is contested. Hormuz is where that contest is now playing out — not only between navies, but between competing interpretations of order.
