United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has yet to win full buy-in for his daring proposal to secure safe passage for vessels ferrying fertiliser and other agricultural products through the blockaded Strait of Hormuz. The initiative, announced on March 27, would involve a UN task force ensuring safe, orderly and predictable maritime transit despite the conflict in the region.
The UN has warned that millions could face acute hunger if disruption continues as the blockade is affecting vulnerable countries like Sudan and Somalia, which are heavily dependent on fertiliser for their planting season.
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An internal document seen by FRANCE 24 and PassBlue laid out a humanitarian framework, proposed in late March, on how a UN task force would open a fertiliser corridor through the Strait regardless of the conflict.
According to the “UN Operational Mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz” document and a map detailing the “streamlined” trade route, shipping agents seeking to use the route would submit vessel information to an online database.
UN monitors deployed to ports in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, the UAE and Iran would verify the cargo. Approved vessels would then proceed to designated coordination zones in international waters near the strait before being cleared for transit.
The mechanism would operate in two phases: first, it would work to ease the export of fertilisers and related raw materials from Gulf ports as the conflict drags on. Then, the operation would extend to other essential commodity imports into the region. The proposal, however, did not set a timeline for implementation. The UN said it could be set up in seven days.
Iran says ‘UN ships are allowed to pass’
The success of the plan hinges heavily on getting the backing of, first and foremost, Iran, as well as from the United States and the Gulf countries that have been drawn into the war through Iran’s retaliatory attacks after the US and Israel incited the war in Iran on February 28.
But it remains unclear if the UN will get support from the war’s key parties. Iran shifts from closing, reopening or restricting the strait’s passage, in response to an ongoing US naval blockade of its ports. The waterway has been virtually closed since early March and the situation remains highly volatile.
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On April 21, Iran’s envoy to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, told FRANCE 24 and PassBlue that his country supports the UN initiative. “Any UN ship – they are allowed to pass the Hormuz Strait, there is no problem for that,” he said. “Not only for fertiliser, even for the oil and the gas, also. All the countries – they can apply, they request to the relevant authority [in Iran] and they can take permission. Only the aggressors countries … have no permission to pass. All the UN ships have the permission to pass.”
He also said that further talks between the Iranians and the Americans in Islamabad are contingent on the US ending its naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, adding that the US has agreed to doing so privately but not publicly. “We have received some sign that they are ready to [break] it, and as soon as they [break] this blockade, I think that the next round of the negotiation will take place in Islamabad.”
Mixed reception
The initiative is receiving some public support, such as from the European Union. Indonesia described the initiative as an interim step that can mitigate global energy and food insecurity. But Kuwait, speaking in a General Assembly meeting on April 16 on behalf of its fellow Gulf countries Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as Jordan, made no mention of Guterres’s proposal. A lack of commitment publicly could be understood as a lack of support.
The US mission to the UN has been informed about the initiative but has offered no reply. US Ambassador Mike Waltz said during the Assembly meeting that the Trump administration is committed to ensuring that food aid, fertiliser, energy supplies and commercial products can move freely through the Persian Gulf waterway without threats or attacks, but did not say a word about Guterres’s mechanism. Nor did Israel in its remarks.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, the Executive Director of the UN Office of Project Services – the UN agency in charge of the task force – said to FRANCE 24 and PassBlue: “I have been conducting extensive meetings in New York over the last weeks with relevant member states. In these meetings I have shared more information on the design and operationalisation of the Mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz. The Mechanism aims at facilitating movement through the Strait of Hormuz for commercial vessels carrying fertilisers and related material out of the Gulf.”
Watch moreIran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz: Fertiliser supply chains under strain
While Secretary-General Guterres chose da Silva, a fellow former Portuguese politician, to lead the operational track of the initiative, he put veteran French diplomat Jean Arnault, his personal envoy for the Middle East conflict, in charge of the diplomatic side.
The UN initiative for Hormuz seeks to create a foundation for a broader UN push for peace in the region, according to diplomats. Arnault was in Oman last week, has just left Egypt and is now reportedly headed to Islamabad, although he will not directly participate in any US-Iran ceasefire talks there, according to the UN.
They aim so to get a solid commitment from several key nations which have so far remained mostly silent on the UN initiative. Although da Silva he did not say how the countries reacted, he added that the main objective of the mechanism “is to mitigate the humanitarian impact of the Middle East conflict, particularly on vulnerable populations in countries affected by disruptions to availability of fertilisers and agricultural supply chains. This would mostly be to fertiliser-dependent countries, especially in Asia and the African continent.”
Race against time
Time is of the essence, as the planting season goes until late May. The World Food Programme (WFP) warned on March 17 that 45 million people could be forced into starvation if the strait remains closed. Currently, about 10 to 12 percent of the world’s fertiliser supplies are blocked, according to the UN.
“If this conflict continues, it will send shockwaves across the globe, and families who already cannot afford their next meal will be hit the hardest,” warned WFP Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Carl Skau. “Without an adequately funded humanitarian response, it could spell catastrophe for millions already on the edge.”
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The UN emphasises that this plan is strictly about food security, and the proposal also reflects Guterres’s attempts to mediate a humanitarian project in the tempestuous Gulf region in the last year of his 10-year term.
“Unlike grain shocks, the impact of fertiliser disruptions is delayed but more structural,” the UN internal document reads, emphasising the need to get fertiliser flowing again through the Hormuz waterway. “Reduced availability and rising costs will translate into lower agricultural yields in upcoming planting cycles, increasing the likelihood of sustained food price inflation and heightened humanitarian needs.”
Industry sources suggest that Saudi Arabia accounts for up to 46 percent of the overall Gulf countries’ output of fertiliser, followed by Qatar, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Sudan and Somalia import a large percentage of their fertilisers from the Gulf countries, according to the UN.
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) says a third of global maritime fertiliser trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. One principle for the plan to work is that parties to the conflict – Iran, the US and the Gulf countries – will provide full access to vessels carrying fertiliser or agricultural products regardless of their origin or their destination – that is, with no distinctions made for flags. This is a crucial hurdle for the UN team put together by Guterres to surmount. “Discussions are obviously fairly delicate as you try to implement this sort of mechanism in a conflict zone,” Stephane Dujarric, Guterres’s spokesperson, told PassBlue during the daily briefing on April 16 in reference to the Hormuz proposal. “There’s been some very positive reaction, but obviously all the pieces of the puzzle need to be in place for us to – let’s say – be a bit more public about it.”
High discomfort by Gulf countries
Jamal Fares Alrowaiei, Bahrain’s permanent representative to the UN, poked holes in the UN mechanism, saying it is not a holistic response to the insecurity in the maritime route. Bahrain, a small island country situated between Iran and Saudi Arabia, has been up against the wall trying to defend itself against Iran’s violent retaliations and the curfews on fishing and recreational vessels on surrounding coastal waters in place until further notice.
“The proposed initiative addresses important operational aspects but does not fully address the current security threats to maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz that require an immediate response,” Alrowaiei told PassBlue in early April as Bahrain assumed its role as rotating president of the UN Security Council. “Its scope remains limited, including its focus on specific categories of goods and not others, rather than a comprehensive address of maritime security.”
Other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries worry that such an agreement signed directly with the UN could give Iran official recognition or a degree of authority over the strait, which they strongly oppose. Additionally, there is little incentive to fight for a fertiliser corridor when the Gulf countries’ main concern is exporting their oil and gas.
A Gulf diplomat berated Guterres in his conference room earlier this month for introducing the proposal without consulting that diplomat’s Gulf country, several diplomats told PassBlue. They also say that some countries in the region may prefer to keep the UN from interfering in the strait, where it could bear witness as a neutral party to goings-on there. The UN task force for the Strait of Hormuz project would establish a joint coordination center in Salalah, Oman. The center would be staffed by civilian and military liaison representatives from relevant member states alongside UN officials. The hub would provide real-time coordination of vessel movements through the waterway in order to avoid conflicts or accidents.
“Such corridors are grounded in established principles of international humanitarian law and have been supported by the United Nations in crises around the world,” said Kelly Razzouk, the International Rescue Committee’s Vice President for Policy & Advocacy. “Ensuring humanitarian access is a legal and moral obligation shared by warring and non-warring parties alike.”
As the UN seeks a short-term solution to prevent a global food crisis, UN insiders worry the war will drag on and civilians will bear the brunt.
“For the Iranians, It’s in their interests that this war drags on until they exhaust the Americans,” said a senior UN official who has extensive experience negotiating in the Middle East. “You know, this is the crocodile’s tactic. It suffocates its prey under water until it stops struggling.”
(This FRANCE 24 investigation was co-published with PassBlue)