Well that didn't last long. The United States handed Iran a nice little 60-day license to sell oil on the open market, and Iran apparently decided the best way to celebrate was by letting projectiles fly at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. So now the license is gone, revoked after less than three weeks, because apparently "good behavior" was too tall an order.
As Trending Politics reported, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control pulled General License X on Tuesday, July 7, following a series of attacks on commercial vessels in and around the strait over the preceding 24 hours. The license, issued on June 22, had authorized the production, sale, delivery, and offloading of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products, and related transactions like banking and insurance. It was supposed to run until August 21. It did not make it to August 21.
A U.S. official with knowledge of the revocation told the New York Post, "The Office of Foreign Assets Control is revoking GL X, which authorized the sale of Iranian oil. As President Trump and the administration have repeatedly affirmed, the MOU in effect with Iran is entirely performance-based. Iran will only reap benefits if they exhibit good behavior." The official added, "Iran's actions in the Strait were wholly unacceptable to the United States and will be met with consequences. Our negotiators continue to work in good faith towards a final deal."
So what exactly happened? According to Reuters, projectiles struck multiple commercial vessels transiting the strait or nearby waters off Oman's coast. A Qatari LNG tanker called the Al Rekayyat took a hit that started a fire in its engine room and posed explosion risks. A Saudi supertanker named the Wedyan was also damaged. A third tanker got tagged by a drone but sustained minor damage and kept on trucking to its destination. The Joint Maritime Information Center raised the threat level from "substantial" to "severe," which is the maritime equivalent of saying "maybe don't come here right now."
Iran, naturally, did not claim responsibility. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson told Axios that vessels using routes not coordinated with Iran or those "tampering" with ship tracking systems face risks, adding that Iran was "diligently fulfilling its commitments" under the agreement. Qatar and Saudi Arabia were not buying it. Both countries attributed responsibility to Iran and filed formal protests.
The whole thing is almost impressive in its self-destructive logic. Iran got a deal that let it sell oil for the first time in ages, then allegedly attacked the very shipping lane the deal was designed to keep open. It is like being handed a gift card and then setting the store on fire. Shipping traffic through the strait dropped sharply on the day of the incidents, undoing weeks of progress after a June memorandum of understanding had calmed things down and restored higher shipping volumes.
The revocation puts Iran right back under the longstanding sanctions that had already strangled its oil exports. Performance-based deal, meet non-performance.
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