Analysis: What happens if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz?

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Strait of Hormuz, Makran region in southern Iran and southwestern Pakistan, Gulf of Oman and the northern coast of Oman as seen from space. (Photo by NASA Earth Observatory/ AFP)
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The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most strategically vital chokepoints in the world, and any blockade by Iran would pose serious risks for transport of oil. (AFP/File)
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Updated 17 June 2025
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Analysis: What happens if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz?

  • Tehran has never fully closed the strategic waterway but it has threatened to do so many times in response to geopolitical tensions
  • Iran-Israel war has potentially immediate ramifications for energy-exporting Gulf states and, in the longer term, for the entire world

LONDON: It is thanks to a quirk of ancient geological history that almost half the global oil and gas reserves are located under or around the waters of the Arabian Gulf, and that the flow of the bulk of bounty to the world must pass through the narrow maritime bottleneck that is the Strait of Hormuz.

On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the world that Israel’s unprecedented attack on Iran earlier in the day was an act of self-defense, aimed at disrupting its nuclear program.

By Saturday, Israel had broadened its targets from nuclear facilities, ballistic-missile factories and military commanders to oil facilities in apparent retaliation for waves of missile and drone strikes on its population centers.




This handout satellite image released by Planet Labs on June 15, 2025, shows close up view of damaged tunnel entrances at Kermanshah missile facilities, western Iran on June 15, 2025. (© 2025 PLANET LABS PBC via AFP)

In his video broadcast, Netanyahu said: “We will hit every site and every target of the ayatollahs’ regime, and what they have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the coming days.”

In a stroke, Israel had escalated the conflict into a crisis with potentially immediate ramifications for all the oil- and gas-producing Gulf states and, in the longer term, for economies of the region and the entire world.

Reports originating from lawmakers in Tehran began to circulate suggesting that Iran was now threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz. Sardar Esmail Kowsari, a member of Iran’s parliament and a commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned in an interview that closing the waterway “is under consideration and that Iran will make the best decision with determination.”

While the strait is, in the words of the US Energy Information Administration, “the world’s most important oil transit choke point” — about a fifth of the world’s total petroleum liquids consumption passes through it — the two main oil producers, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are not without alternative routes to world markets for their products.




This handout natural-color image acquired with MODIS on NASA's Terra satellite taken on February 5, 2025 shows the Gulf of Oman and the Makran region (C) in southern Iran and southwestern Pakistan, and the Strait of Hormuz (L) and the northern coast of Oman (bottom). (Photo by NASA Earth Observatory / AFP)

Saudi Aramco operates twin oil and liquid gas pipelines which can carry up to 7 million barrels a day from Abqaiq on the Gulf to Yanbu on the Red Sea coast. Aramco has consistently shown resilience and ability to meet the demands of its clients, even when it was attacked in 2019.

The UAE’s onshore oil fields are linked to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman — beyond the Strait of Hormuz — by a pipeline capable of carrying 1.5 million barrels a day. The pipeline has attracted Iran’s attentions before. In 2019, four oil tankers, two each belonging to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, were attacked off the port of Fujairah.

Iran has never fully closed the Strait of Hormuz but it has threatened to do so multiple times in response to geopolitical tensions.

Historically, it has used the threat of closure as a strategic bargaining tool, particularly during periods of heightened conflict. In 2012, for instance, it threatened to block the strait in retaliation for US and European sanctions but did not follow through.




This US Navy handout screenshot of a video shows fast-attack craft from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy swarming Panama-flagged oil tanker Niovi as it transits the Strait of Hormuz on May 3, 2023. (AFP/File)

Naturally, disruptions in supplies would cause an enormous increase in energy price and related costs such as insurance and shipping. This would indirectly impact inflation and prices worldwide from the US to Japan.

According to the experts, Iran can employ unmanned drones, such as the Shahed series, to target specific shipping routes or infrastructure in the strait. It may also attempt to use naval vessels to physically obstruct passage through the strait.

Ironically, the one country in the region that would face no direct consequences from a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is Israel. All of its estimated consumption of 220,000 barrels of crude a day comes via the Mediterranean, from countries including Azerbaijan (exported via the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Turkiye to the eastern Mediterranean), the US, Brazil, Gabon and Nigeria.

Opinion

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)

The capability to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is one thing, a full closure is quite another, as it would harm Iran’s own economy given that it relies on the waterway for its oil exports.

History teaches that shutting off the flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf is far easier said than achieved. The first country to attempt to prevent oil exports from the Gulf was Britain, which in 1951 blockaded exports from the Abadan refinery at the head of the Gulf in response to the Iranian government’s decision to nationalize the country’s oil industry.

The motive was purely financial. In 1933 Britain, in the shape of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., a forerunner of today’s BP, had won a lopsided oil concession from the Iranian government and was reluctant to give it up.

The blockade did not last — impoverished post-war Britain needed Abadan’s oil as badly as Iran — but the consequences of Britain’s actions are arguably still being felt today.

The very existence of the current Iranian regime is a consequence of the 1953 coup jointly engineered by Britain and the US, which overthrew then Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, architect of the oil nationalization plan, and set Iran on the path to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

The first modern blockade of oil shipments in the Gulf happened the following year, when Saddam Hussein, hoping to take advantage of the disruption caused by the revolution and the ousting of the shah, attacked Iran, triggering the disastrous eight-year Iran-Iraq War.

Still equipped with the shah’s US-supplied and trained air force and navy, Iran’s first reaction was successfully to blockade Iraqi warships and oil tankers in Umm Qasr, Iraq’s only deep-water seaport.




Picture released on November 17, 1980 of a column of smoke billowing from an Iranian helicopter shot by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, near Abadan, during Iran-Iraq war. (AFP/File)

Iraqi aircraft began attacking Iranian shipping in the Gulf, provoking an Iranian response that focused initially on neutral ships bringing supplies to Iraq via Kuwait, a development that soon escalated into attacks by both sides on shipping of all flags.

The first tanker to be hit was a Turkish ship bombed by Iraqi aircraft on May 30, 1982, while loading at Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal. The first to be declared a total loss was a Greek tanker, struck by an Iraqi Exocet missile on Dec. 18, 1982.

In terms of lives lost and ships damaged or destroyed, the so-called Tanker War was an extremely costly episode, which caused a temporary sharp rise in oil prices. By the time it ended in 1987, more than 450 ships from 15 countries had been attacked, two-thirds of them by Iraq, and 400 crew members of many nationalities had been killed.

Among the dead were 37 American sailors. On May 17, 1987, American frigate the USS Stark, patrolling in the Gulf midway between Qatar and the Iranian coast, was hit by two Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi Mirage jet.




A port quarter view of the guided missile frigate USS STARK listing to port after being struck by an Iraqi-launched Exocet missile on May 17, 1987. (Wimimedia Commons: Pharaoh Hound)

But at no point throughout the Tanker War was the flow of oil out through the Strait of Hormuz seriously disrupted.

“Iran couldn’t fully close the strait even in the 1980s,” said Sir John Jenkins, former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

“It’s true that in those days the UK and others had a significant mine-sweeping capacity, which we lack today. But even if Iran laid mines again or interfered with shipping in the strait in other ways it will almost certainly draw in US maritime forces from the 5th Fleet (based in Bahrain) and perhaps air assets too.




US Navy warships are seen transiting the Strait of Hormuz, during a deployment to the US 5th Fleet area of operations. (AFP/File)

“Also, attempting to close Hormuz will hit their own significant illegal oil trade.”

Regardless, the Iranians “will be very tempted to do this. But it is a delicate calculation — doing enough to get Russia and in particular China involved in support of de-escalation but not enough to provoke US action, effectively on the side of Israel,” Jenkins said.

In an analysis published in February last year, following an uptick in maritime aggression by Iran in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think tank, concluded that because 76 percent of the crude oil that passes through it is destined for Asian markets, “as one of Tehran’s sole remaining allies, it would not be in China’s best interest for the strait to fully close.”




Oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz. (REUTERS/File Photo)

Lessons learned during the 1980s Tanker War are relevant today. In the wake of that conflict, an analysis by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law offered a cool-headed assessment of the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz to any attempt at enforced closure by Iran.

“Our research and analysis reveals significant limits to Iran’s ability to materially reduce the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz for a sustained period of time,” the report, published in 2008, said.

“We find that a large-scale Iranian campaign would yield about a 5 percent chance of stopping each tanker’s transit with small boat suicide attacks and a roughly 12 percent chance of stopping each tanker’s transit with volleys of anti-ship cruise missiles.”

Initially, the Tanker War led to a 25 percent drop in commercial shipping and a temporary sharp rise in insurance premiums and the price of crude oil.




Tally of attacks on oil tankers during the so-called Tanker War of the 1980s. (Wikimedia Commons)

“But the Tanker War did not significantly disrupt oil shipments … Even at its most intense point, it failed to disrupt more than 2 percent of ships passing through the Gulf,” the report said.

The bottom line, it said, “is that if a disruption to oil flows were to occur, the world oil market retains built in mechanisms to assuage initial effects. And since the long-term disruption of the strait, according to our campaign analysis, is highly improbable, assuaging initial effects might be all we need.

“Panic, therefore, is unnecessary.”

Israel’s critics say it already has much to answer for in unleashing its unilateral assault on Iran. Netanyahu has been claiming for years that Iran was “only months away” from producing a nuclear weapon and his claim that that is the case now has no more credibility than before.

“Benjamin Netanyahu has started a war with Iran that has no justification,” said Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy at Washington think tank the Cato Institute.




Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s true motives in launching his attack on Iran at this time are not hard for political observers to divine. (Pool Photo via AP, File)

Friday’s opening attacks overtook US President Donald Trump’s statement earlier that same day that “the United States is committed to a diplomatic resolution to the Iran nuclear issue.”

“Iran was not on the precipice of acquiring nuclear weapons,” Logan said. “It had not thrown out IAEA inspectors, from whom all information about the Iran nuclear program flowed. It had not enriched uranium to weapons-grade.”

Netanyahu’s true motives in launching his attack at this time are not hard for political observers to divine.

He has successfully derailed US-Iranian nuclear talks — ongoing negotiations, due to have been continued on Sunday in Oman, were canceled.

The attack has also caused the postponement of the three-day joint Saudi-French Gaza peace summit at the UN, which had been due to begin on Tuesday, with the issue of Palestinian sovereignty high on the agenda — anathema to Netanyahu’s right-wing, anti-two-state government.

“Israel has the right to choose its own foreign policy,” Logan said.

But “at the same time, it has the responsibility to bear the costs of that policy.”
 

 


Baghdad and Irbil agree to resume Kurdish oil exports

Updated 17 July 2025
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Baghdad and Irbil agree to resume Kurdish oil exports

  • The quantity should be no less than 230,000 barrels per day, and Baghdad will pay an advance of $16 per barrel
  • Lucrative oil exports have been a major point of tension between Baghdad and Irbil

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi government announced Thursday an agreement to resume crude exports from the autonomous Kurdistan region after a more than two-year halt and amid drone attacks on oil fields.
Lucrative oil exports have been a major point of tension between Baghdad and Irbil, with a key pipeline through Turkiye shut since 2023 over legal disputes and technical issues.
The Kurdistan regional government shall “immediately begin delivering all oil produced” in the region’s field to Baghdad’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) “for export,” the Iraqi government said in a statement.
The quantity should be no less than 230,000 barrels per day, and Baghdad will pay an advance of $16 a barrel.
The Kurdistan regional government said in a statement it “welcomes” the deal, and hoped all agreements would be respected.
Oil exports were previously independently sold by the Kurdistan region, without the approval or oversight of the central administration in Baghdad, through the port of Ceyhan in Turkiye.
But the region’s official oil exports have been frozen since March 2023 when the arbitration tribunal of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris ruled oil exports by the regional government illegal and said that Baghdad had the exclusive right to market all Iraqi oil.
The decision halted the region’s independent exports by pipeline via Turkiye.
Ever since, the federal and regional governments have been haggling over the production and transport costs payable to the region and its commercial partners among other financial issues.
The latest agreement should also solve the long-standing issue of unpaid salaries for civil servants in Kurdistan, which has been tied to the tension over oil.
The federal finance ministry will pay salaries for May once SOMO confirms it has received the oil at the Ceyhan port.
The regional government said it hoped that the issue of salaries would be treated separately from any disputes.
The deal comes after a tense few weeks in Kurdistan, which has seen a spate of unclaimed drone attacks mostly against oil fields, with the latest strike hitting a site operated by a Norwegian firm on Thursday morning — the second attack in two days on the same site.
There has been no claim of responsibility for any of the past week’s attacks, and Baghdad has promised an investigation to identify the culprits.
 


US says it opposed Israeli strikes in Syria

Updated 17 July 2025
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US says it opposed Israeli strikes in Syria

  • State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce says US is engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria 'at the highest levels'

WASHINGTON: The United States said Thursday that it opposed its ally Israel’s strikes in Syria, a day after Washington helped broker a deal to end violence.
“The United States did not support recent Israeli strikes,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters.
“We are engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria at the highest levels, both to address the present crisis and reach a lasting agreement between the two sovereign states,” she said.
She declined to say if the United States had expressed its displeasure with Israel or whether it would oppose future strikes on Syria.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced concern when asked about the Israeli strikes, which included attacking the defense ministry in Damascus.
He later issued a statement that did not directly address the Israeli strikes but voiced broader concern about the violence.
Israel said it was intervening on behalf of the Druze community after communal clashes.
Israel has repeatedly been striking Syria, a historic adversary, since Islamist fighters in December overthrew Iranian-allied leader Bashar Assad.
US President Donald Trump, who spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday by telephone, has sided with Turkiye and Saudi Arabia in seeking a better relationship with Syria under its new leader, former guerrilla Ahmed Al-Sharaa.


Israel has refused to renew visas for heads of at least 3 UN agencies in Gaza

Updated 17 July 2025
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Israel has refused to renew visas for heads of at least 3 UN agencies in Gaza

UNITED NATIONS: Israel has refused to renew visas for the heads of at least three United Nations agencies in Gaza, which the UN humanitarian chief blames on their work trying to protect Palestinian civilians in the war-torn territory.
Visas for the local leaders of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA; the human rights agency OHCHR; and the agency supporting Palestinians in Gaza, UNRWA, have not been renewed in recent months, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric confirmed.
Tom Fletcher, UN head of humanitarian affairs, told the Security Council on Wednesday that the UN’s humanitarian mandate is not just to provide aid to civilians in need and report what its staff witnesses but to advocate for international humanitarian law.
“Each time we report on what we see, we face threats of further reduced access to the civilians we are trying to serve,” he said. “Nowhere today is the tension between our advocacy mandate and delivering aid greater than in Gaza.”
Fletcher said, “Visas are not renewed or reduced in duration by Israel, explicitly in response to our work on protection of civilians.”
Israel’s UN mission did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment about the visa renewals. Israel has been sharply critical of UNRWA, even before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack in southern Israel — accusing the agency of colluding with Hamas and teaching anti-Israel hatred, which UNRWA vehemently denies.
Since then, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies have claimed that UNRWA is deeply infiltrated by Hamas and that its staffers participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. Israel formally banned UNRWA from operating in its territory, and its commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, has been barred from entering Gaza.
At Wednesday’s Security Council meeting, Fletcher called conditions in Gaza “beyond vocabulary,” with food running out and Palestinians seeking something to eat being shot. He said Israel, the occupying power in Gaza, is failing in its obligation under the Geneva Conventions to provide for civilian needs.
In response, Israel accused OCHA of continuing “to abandon all semblance of neutrality and impartiality in its statements and actions, despite claiming otherwise.”
Reut Shapir Ben-Naftaly, political coordinator at Israel’s UN Mission, told the Security Council that some of its 15 members seem to forget that the Oct. 7 attacks killed about 1,200 people and some 250 were taken hostage, triggering the war in Gaza and the humanitarian situation.
“Instead, we’re presented with a narrative that forces Israel into a defendant’s chair, while Hamas, the very cause of this conflict and the very instigator of suffering of Israelis but also of Palestinians, goes unmentioned, unchallenged and immune to condemnation,” she said.
More than 58,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half were women and children.
Ravina Shamdasani, chief spokesperson for the Geneva-based UN human rights body, confirmed Thursday that the head of its office in the occupied Palestinian territories “has been denied entry into Gaza.”
“The last time he tried to enter was in February 2025 and since then, he has been denied entry,” she told The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, this is not unusual. Aid workers, UN staff, journalists and others have been denied access to Gaza.”
Israel has accused a UN-backed commission probing abuses in Gaza, whose three members just resigned, and the Human Rights Council’s independent investigator Francesca Albanese of antisemitism.
Albanese has accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza, which it and its ally the US vehemently deny. The Trump administration recently issued sanctions against Albanese.
Fletcher, the UN humanitarian chief, told the Security Council that Israel also is not granting “security clearances” for staff to enter Gaza to continue their work and that UN humanitarian partners are increasingly being denied entry as well.
He noted that “56 percent of the entries denied into Gaza in 2025 were for emergency medical teams — frontline responders who save lives.”
“Hundreds of aid workers have been killed; and those who continue to work endure hunger, danger and loss, like everyone else in the Gaza Strip,” Fletcher said.


Mothers of Israeli soldiers fighting on all fronts to stop Gaza war

Updated 17 July 2025
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Mothers of Israeli soldiers fighting on all fronts to stop Gaza war

  • Saidof said her movement brings together some 70,000 mothers of active-duty troops, conscripts and reservists
  • Mothers on the Front’s foremost demand is that everyone serve in the army, as mandated by Israeli law

HOD HASHARON, Israel: “We mothers of soldiers haven’t slept in two years,” said Ayelet-Hashakhar Saidof, a lawyer who founded the Mothers on the Front movement in Israel.

A 48-year-old mother of three, including a soldier currently serving in the army, Saidof said her movement brings together some 70,000 mothers of active-duty troops, conscripts and reservists to demand, among other things, a halt to the fighting in Gaza.

Her anxiety was familiar to other mothers of soldiers interviewed by AFP who have refocused their lives on stopping a war that many Israelis increasingly feel has run its course, even as a ceasefire deal remains elusive.

In addition to urging an end to the fighting in Gaza, Mothers on the Front’s foremost demand is that everyone serve in the army, as mandated by Israeli law.

That request is particularly urgent today, as draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews have become a wedge issue in Israeli society, with the military facing manpower shortages in its 21-month fight against the militant group Hamas.

As the war drags on, Saidof has become increasingly concerned that Israel will be confronted with long-term ramifications from the conflict.

“We’re seeing 20-year-olds completely lost, broken, exhausted, coming back with psychological wounds that society doesn’t know how to treat,” she said.

“They are ticking time bombs on our streets, prone to violence, to outbursts of rage.”

According to the army, 23 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza over the past month, and more than 450 have died since the start of the ground offensive in October 2023.

Saidof accuses the army of neglecting soldiers’ lives.

Combat on the ground has largely dried up, she said, and soldiers were now being killed by improvised explosives and “operational mistakes.”

“So where are they sending them? Just to be targets in a shooting range?” she asked bitterly.

Over the past months, Saidof has conducted her campaign in the halls of Israel’s parliament, but also in the streets.

Opening the boot of her car, she proudly displayed a stockpile of posters, placards and megaphones for protests.
“Soldiers fall while the government stands,” one poster read.

Her campaign does not have a political slant, she maintained.

“The mothers of 2025 are strong. We’re not afraid of anyone, not the generals, not the rabbis, not the politicians,” she said defiantly.

Saidof’s group is not the only mothers’ movement calling for an end to the war.
Outside the home of military chief of staff Eyal Zamir, four women gathered one morning to demand better protection for their children.

“We’re here to ask him to safeguard the lives of our sons who we’ve entrusted to him,” said Rotem-Sivan Hoffman, a doctor and mother of two soldiers.

“To take responsibility for military decisions and to not let politicians use our children’s lives for political purposes that put them in unnecessary danger” .

Hoffman is one of the leaders of the Ima Era, or “Awakened Mother,” movement, whose motto is: “We don’t have children for wars without goals.”

“For many months now, we’ve felt this war should have ended,” she told AFP.

“After months of fighting and progress that wasn’t translated into a diplomatic process, nothing has been done to stop the war, bring back the hostages, withdraw the army from Gaza or reach any agreements.”

Beside her stood Orit Wolkin, also the mother of a soldier deployed to the front, whose anxiety was visible.

“Whenever he comes back from combat, of course that’s something I look forward to eagerly, something I’m happy about, but my heart holds back from feeling full joy because I know he’ll be going back” to the front, she said.

At the funeral of Yuli Faktor, a 19-year-old soldier killed in Gaza the previous day alongside two comrades, his mother stood sobbing before her son’s coffin draped in the Israeli flag.

She spoke to him in Russian for the last time before his burial.

“I want to hold you. I miss you. Forgive me, please. Watch over us, wherever you are.”


Foreign ministers of Middle Eastern countries affirm support for Syria’s security, stability, and sovereignty

The Kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. (File/SPA)
Updated 47 min 3 sec ago
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Foreign ministers of Middle Eastern countries affirm support for Syria’s security, stability, and sovereignty

  • The foreign ministers welcomed Syrian president’s commitment to hold accountable all those responsible for violations against Syrian citizens in Sweida Governorate

RIYADH: The foreign ministers of Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, affirmed their support for Syria’s security, unity, stability, and sovereignty in a joint statement issued on Thursday.

The Kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and his counterparts from Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt, and Turkiye held intensive talks on developments in Syria during the last two days.

The talks aimed to come up with a unified position and coordinate efforts to support the Syrian government in its efforts to rebuild Syria on foundations that guarantee its security, stability, unity, sovereignty, and the rights of all its citizens.

Prince Faisal spoke to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday to emphasize the importance of respecting Syria’s independence and sovereignty, the need to halt Israeli aggression on Syrian territory, and the importance of uniting efforts to support the Syrian government’s measures to establish security and uphold the rule of law across its entire territory.

The foreign ministers welcomed the ceasefire reached to end the crisis in Sweida Governorate, and stressed the necessity of its implementation to protect Syria, its unity, and its citizens, prevent the shedding of Syrian blood, and ensure the protection of civilians and the rule of law.

They also welcomed Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa’s commitment to hold accountable all those responsible for violations against Syrian citizens in Sweida Governorate.

The ministers expressed support for all efforts to establish security and the rule of law in Sweida Governorate and throughout Syria.

They also condemned and rejected repeated Israeli attacks on Syria and said they are flagrant violations of international law and a blatant assault on Syria’s sovereignty which destabilizes its security, stability, and unity and undermines the government’s efforts to build a new Syria that achieves the aspirations and choices of its people.

They added that Syria’s security and stability are a pillar of regional security and stability and a shared priority.

The ministers called on the international community to support the Syrian government in its reconstruction process and called on the Security Council to assume its legal and moral responsibilities to ensure Israel’s full withdrawal from occupied Syrian territories, the cessation of all Israeli hostilities against Syria and interference in its affairs, and the implementation of Resolution 2766 and the 1974 Disengagement Agreement.