A German naval vessel named the Fulda is in the Mediterranean, ready to do the one thing without which the Strait of Hormuz cannot physically reopen: find and clear the mines Iran planted and has since lost track of, the ones the US Pentagon told Congress could take six months to remove.
France and Britain have brought together more than 50 countries around a common mission. Washington’s response was to threaten troop withdrawals from Germany and to attack Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Truth Social after he noted that the US had no exit strategy. One response creates something long-lasting, whereas the other is just for show.
On April 27, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Iran’s grip on Hormuz “the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon that they’re trying to use against the world.” He was right. It is also, whether he intended it or not, a description of everything wrong with the strategy he is defending.
Defusing a nuclear standoff demands more than two countries talking. Frameworks like the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation on Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) derive their authority from structural permanence — they function regardless of whether the nations involved like one another.
The Hormuz negotiations rest on shakier ground: improvised exchanges that could easily be undone by an election or a shift in domestic politics. Bilateral dialogue can serve as an entry point into a broader multilateral process, but only if it is built correctly from the start with named partners, defined deadlines and an architecture open enough for others to formally join.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board labeled US President Donald Trump a “sucker” and warned that this is Iran’s “third swindle.” Tehran has used the Strait as leverage and reneged twice, and the Journal is right that additional pressure is necessary.
However, the first two Hormuz cycles ended without a lasting resolution. This was not due to a lack of American resolve but to a lack of substance. Applying more pressure leads to tougher negotiations, but the deadline remains unchanged.
Rubio clearly understands the situation. A weapon maintained by mines and fast boats cannot simply be halted with a ceasefire: it requires a highly multilateral enforcement regime, making any use of it counterproductive.
Currently, such a regime is absent for Hormuz, and the bilateral discussions underway are not aimed at creating one. Establishing it is genuinely difficult. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) involvement elicits Iranian objections, UN mandates demand Security Council consensus and setting rules of engagement among 50 navies can take years.
The Carnegie Endowment has argued that the Strait has become “a more credible nuclear option for Iran than its nuclear program.” Months of strikes on Iranian enrichment facilities have left Tehran in possession of a coercive instrument that was not bombed, cannot be bombed and will be available to whoever runs Iran next, whatever any potential future deal says about centrifuges.
Tehran will call any GCC-inclusive monitoring group a foreign intelligence operation. So be it. NATO never sought Moscow’s blessing, and the mine-clearing coalition — Germany, France, Britain among them — is forming without Iranian consent, under a UN mandate with real naval backing.
The GCC brings tankers, radar and port access. Iran’s grip on the strait stays intact — no one disputes that. But a GCC presence makes interdiction costly enough to be self-defeating, as guarantors of passage rather than mere witnesses.
The Fulda is the focal point. Germany pre-positioned the one tool without which no real reopening is physically possible, and 50 countries organized around the framework to use it. The administration had its governance architecture handed to it, ready-made, by allies who had already done the coalition work — and chose instead to launch Project Freedom.
This was not a tactic ahead of a later negotiating round. It was a straight substitution: unilateral naval escort in place of the multilateral architecture allies had already built.
The key is that a multilateral framework isn’t perfect. Even a less robust one gives Iran fewer unilateral powers than a bilateral agreement. Iran’s proposal to postpone the nuclear issue is a demand, not a concession, and Rubio’s refusal is justified. Poor sequencing hardly counts as an effective strategy.
Without a governance framework, any Hormuz deal leaves Iran’s economic nuclear weapon intact and ready for the next government in Tehran, the next moment of opportunity or the next crisis. That’s merely a matter of scheduling.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal failed structurally, not diplomatically. Its survival depended on a single American president choosing to maintain it, and one election ended it. Iran’s patience has twice outlasted Washington’s political will.
The answer to that problem is not a tougher negotiator. It is an agreement that 50 countries have a stake in preserving — one that is, by design, too multilateral to abandon unilaterally.
Rubio named the weapon. The Fulda is in position. Fifty countries are waiting on a framework that the administration declined to build. A framework takes negotiation, buy-in and time. An announcement takes a press conference.
Before November, one of those was on the table. Iran, which has been doing this longer than any of the current negotiators have been in government, knows exactly what it is getting.
Eric Alter is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and a former UN civil servant.
