Qatar will reopen its waters to all maritime traffic from Monday 27 July, CNN reported, reversing the wartime restriction Doha imposed as strikes and interdictions spread through The Gulf1. No other Gulf state has yet lifted one.
Qatar has more reason than most to try. It exports liquefied natural gas through the strait of Hormuz and nothing else, with no pipeline alternative to the sea, so every week of suppressed traffic bills directly to the Qatari state. It also hosts CENTCOM's forward headquarters at Al Udeid and has mediated between Washington and Tehran throughout, which makes a reopening an assertion of confidence as much as a commercial decision.
Whether traffic follows the permission is a separate question, and the answer will arrive within days. Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, was urging action on 6,000 seafarers stranded in the strait as recently as 24 July, which is what happens when charterers and underwriters, rather than governments, are setting the sailing schedule. Doha can open its own waters; it cannot open the corridor beyond them.
