Ports and Maritime Organisation

Iran's Ports and Maritime Organisation (PMO) is the civil state body responsible for managing the country's ports, coastguard functions, and vessel transit administration. Founded in 1964 and subordinate to the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, the PMO oversees nine major ports including Bandar Abbas, Shahid Rajaee, and Imam Khomeini, which together handle the bulk of Iran's non-oil and transit trade. In peacetime the PMO issues vessel transit permissions, coordinates with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, and interfaces with international bodies including the IMO. It is Iran's principal interlocutor for port-state control matters and the signatory to international maritime conventions on Iran's behalf.

The PMO's civil authority operates through the Ministry hierarchy and is structurally distinct from the IRGC Navy, which is a military command reporting to the Supreme Leader. This institutional separation matters: the PMO can agree to international conventions, publish port-state procedures, and negotiate with shipping organisations in ways that military bodies cannot without framing them as security agreements. However, when the IRGC asserts control over a waterway, the PMO's nominal authority over vessel movements becomes non-operational. The PMO retains administrative functions inside port perimeters, but transit authority over contested straits shifts to the military chain.

Since the onset of the 2026 Hormuz conflict, the PMO's role over strait transits has been effectively superseded by the IRGC Navy and, from May 2026, by the newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority. The PGSA, which sits under military command rather than the Ministry of Roads, assumed the transit registration function that would ordinarily fall to the PMO. The PMO continues to administer Iran's commercial ports and to receive port-state calls, but the strait transit regime is no longer within its operational perimeter.