MARGINALIA: Control, According to Whom?

COTABATO CITY (MindaNews / 13 August 2026) — Six ships.

I kept returning to that number when I read Monday’s report from the Strait of Hormuz.

Before this war, around 130 to 140 vessels crossed that narrow waterway every day. Tankers heavy with crude. Container ships carrying things whose origins and destinations most of us would never know. Seafarers checking instruments, drinking coffee, calling home when the signal allowed.

On Monday, only six passed.

Four went in. Two came out.

Six.

There are days when statistics explain very little. And there are days when one small number tells almost the whole story.

We often imagine war through explosions. Perhaps this is because television has trained us to do so. A missile streaking through the night is war. A burning building is war. Soldiers running through smoke are war.

An empty sea does not look like war. But it can be.

A ship that does not sail carries no dramatic photograph. There is no fireball. Yet somewhere down the chain, crude oil does not arrive at a refinery. Insurance becomes more expensive. Freight charges rise. A factory recalculates its costs. A jeepney driver in Mindanao pays a little more at the pump.

The war has traveled thousands of kilometers without firing a shot at him.

This week, Washington and Tehran continued arguing about who controls Hormuz.

Donald Trump says America does. Iran’s new security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, says the strait will remain restricted until Washington accepts Iranian conditions. The United States wants commercial passage restored. Iran wants its frozen money released and the American blockade ended, among other demands.

Then there is Oman, quietly trying to negotiate the lanes through which ships might pass.

You see how strange sovereignty becomes when drawn on water.

A line on a maritime chart says one thing. A missile battery on shore says another. An aircraft carrier says something else. And the captain of a tanker, deciding whether the insurance and the danger are worth it, may give the most practical answer of all.

He stays away.

Social constructivists have long argued that power does not exist only in weapons and money. It also lives in meanings that people collectively accept.

Consider the word control.

Washington says it controls Hormuz because its navy is overwhelmingly powerful and can enforce a blockade on Iranian ports.

Tehran says it controls Hormuz because most ships still cannot pass normally without Iran allowing them to do so.

Which one controls the strait?

The answer depends partly on what we have decided the word means. This is not wordplay. People kill and die over meanings like these.

For Washington, accepting Iran’s conditions could be narrated as rewarding coercion. After months of fighting, how would an American president explain that Iran restricted one of the world’s most important waterways and emerged with frozen assets released?

For Tehran, reopening Hormuz without concessions carries the opposite danger. Washington could say: pressure worked. Bombing worked. Blockade worked. Iran eventually yielded.

The material issue is ships. The political issue is the story that will be told when the ships begin moving again. Neither side wants the other to write the ending.

And so, six ships crossed.

While leaders argued about control, another ship was attacked Tuesday far away at Bab el-Mandeb. Four crew members died. Two rescuers were also killed. The Houthis say the vessel carried Saudi military equipment.

In the Gulf of Oman, meanwhile, an American helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at another commercial vessel. Washington says the ship ignored warnings and was heading toward an Iranian port in violation of the U.S. blockade.

Two waterways. Two ships attacked. Two different explanations for why force was justified.

This is how every war constructs its moral vocabulary.

We strike; they attack. We deter; they threaten. We enforce; they blockade. Our dead are victims. Their dead are consequences.

Once these meanings harden, diplomacy becomes difficult because negotiators are not merely exchanging concessions. They are negotiating identities. Who was the aggressor? Who resisted? Who blinked? Who won?

Sometimes I wonder whether peace becomes possible only when people become tired enough to leave some of these questions unanswered.

A settlement may leave grievances unresolved. One side may believe the other owes compensation. Families will still remember their dead. Politicians will return home and tell different stories about what happened.

Perhaps Iran will say resistance forced America to negotiate.

Perhaps Trump will say American pressure forced Iran to reopen Hormuz.

Let them argue over the sentence if ships can safely cross again.

There is a temptation among those of us who write about international politics to search for grand endings. Victory. Defeat. A new regional order. The collapse of one axis and the rise of another.

But ordinary people experience geopolitics differently.

They experience it in the price of diesel. In an OFW’s delayed flight. In the cost of rice transported by truck. In a seafarer’s wife looking at her phone after hearing that another vessel was hit.

Maybe this is why that small number bothers me more than the grand declarations from Washington and Tehran.

Six ships. Not 140. Six.

When the number begins climbing again, diplomats will issue statements. Presidents will claim credit. Analysts will debate who conceded more.

I will be interested in something simpler.

I want to see the seventh ship.

#InternationalRelations #WestAsia #Iran #SocialConstructivism #Hormuz

[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International Relations and Shari‘ah Counselor-at-Law (SCL), is a publisher-writer, university professor, vlogger, chess trainer, and translator (from Persian into English and Filipino) with tens of written and translation works to his credit on such subjects as international politics, history, political philosophy, intra-faith and interfaith relations, cultural heritage, Islamic finance, jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (‘ilm al-kalam), Qur’anic sciences and exegesis (tafsir), hadith, ethics, and mysticism. He can be reached at mlimba@diplomats.com and www.youtube.com/@WayfaringWithMansoor, and his books can be purchased at www.elzistyle.com and www.amazon.com/author/mansoorlimba.]