Strait of Hormuz. PGSA claimed zone shown as red dashed polygon (indicative per authority's own text description; not survey-grade). ADCOP bypass pipeline in green. Key positions: Bandar Abbas (IRGC), Fujairah (UAE bypass terminus), Qeshm Island, Umm Al-Quwain, Abu Dhabi. Toggle RANGE to show IRGC envelope. Toggle VECTORS for Bandar Abbas to Fujairah line. Map: Strategy Battles / OSINT. Datum WGS84, UTM Zone 40R. ©StrategyBattles.net 2026

On 20 May, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority posted a map to X defining what it described as the regulatory jurisdiction for management of the Strait of Hormuz. The PGSA, a body with no precedent in Iranian administrative history, delineated its zone using two boundary lines: an eastern line connecting Kuh-e Mubarak on the Iranian coast (approximately 40R DQ 35273 40447, 26.5833°N, 56.3500°E) to the south of Fujairah in the UAE; and a western line connecting the tip of Qeshm Island (approximately 40R CQ 80695 61523, 26.7700°N, 55.8000°E) to Umm Al-Quwain (40R CP 54889 28268, 25.5647°N, 55.5554°E) on the UAE coast. The authority stated that transit through this area for passage of the strait requires coordination with, and authorisation from, the PGSA.

What the coordinates mean in practical terms is important. Fujairah port, at 40R DN 33579 79371 (25.1288°N, 56.3411°E), sits on the Gulf of Oman coast east of the strait. It is the terminus for the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline, the UAE's existing Hormuz bypass pipeline, with a capacity of approximately 1.8 million barrels per day. It is also the designated endpoint for the West-East Pipeline, currently around 50 percent complete, that would double that bypass capacity by 2027. By anchoring the PGSA's eastern boundary claim at a point south of Fujairah, Tehran has placed the port itself, and the pipelines that flow into it, notionally inside its claimed zone.

The claim has no basis in international law. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which Iran has not ratified but which establishes customary norms on straits used for international navigation, provides for a right of transit passage that cannot be suspended. The inclusion of Umm Al-Quwain and Fujairah as southern delimiting markers is a claim over UAE territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, neither of which Iran has any legal entitlement to administer. Whether the PGSA intends to enforce this claim physically, or is publishing it as a diplomatic maximum position, is a separate question.

Anwar Gargash, the UAE's presidential adviser and among the most senior foreign policy voices in Abu Dhabi, posted his response the following day. His framing was specific: Iran is attempting to create a new reality "born from a clear military defeat." The construction is deliberate. It places the PGSA declaration not as an act of strength but as a symptom of weakness; a country that has just lost a war trying to convert its remaining physical control of a waterway into a permanent legal institution before a diplomatic settlement strips that control away.

The UAE's strategic situation at Hormuz has been consistently uncomfortable since February. The country depends on the strait for a large share of its oil exports, has Fujairah port targeted by Iranian strikes, and has denied that it allowed US forces to use its territory to attack Iran. Tehran has accused the UAE of playing an active role in the war, a claim Abu Dhabi has rejected. The "pipe dream" language signals that Abu Dhabi is not prepared to accept even a nominally institutional Iranian claim over Emirati coastal waters, regardless of what Iran's armed forces are currently doing in the strait.

The rebuke also carries a practical dimension. The UAE's accelerated bypass pipeline programme is explicitly designed to erode the leverage that makes Iran's Hormuz position worth anything. A Fujairah that can export 3.6 million barrels per day entirely outside IRGC jurisdiction is a fundamentally different strategic asset than one capped at 1.8 million. Tehran's decision to formally claim authority south of Fujairah the same week ADNOC confirmed the pipeline is 50 percent complete and on track for 2027 is not coincidental timing.

ADNOC CEO Sultan Al Jaber told an Atlantic Council event on 20 May that the West-East Pipeline is already approximately 50 percent complete and that the company is accelerating delivery toward the 2027 target date. The pipeline runs from Abu Dhabi's upstream production infrastructure westward and terminates at Fujairah port on the Gulf of Oman. Combined with the existing ADCOP pipeline, it would give the UAE a total Hormuz-bypass export capacity of roughly 3.6 million barrels per day. Al Jaber also confirmed that ADNOC facilities have been directly targeted and damaged during the conflict; recovery timelines range from weeks for some assets to months for more complex infrastructure.

Iran's Hormuz leverage depends entirely on the absence of viable alternatives. Saudi Arabia has its East-West Pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea. The UAE has ADCOP, which is currently operating at or near its 1.8 million bpd ceiling. When the West-East Pipeline reaches operational status, the Gulf's two largest oil producers will both have substantial bypass capacity that does not require IRGC permission. The PGSA's attempt to extend its claimed zone south of Fujairah can be read as a preemptive effort to assert some form of authority over that bypass route before it becomes operational and before any diplomatic settlement locks in the current state.

Al Jaber placed the economic cost in stark terms: more than one billion barrels of oil have been lost due to the strait's closure, with nearly 100 million additional barrels lost every week it remains shut. Even if a settlement is reached immediately, he estimated it would take at least four months to ramp flows back to 80 percent of normal levels, and until the first or second quarter of 2027 for full normalisation. That timeline runs directly alongside the West-East Pipeline completion target, which means Tehran has a narrowing window in which its Hormuz position carries maximum coercive value.

The PGSA presents a novel problem for international maritime law because it is not a straightforward territorial claim by an established sovereign body. It is an administrative authority created by a belligerent state to manage a chokepoint it seized through military action. No flag state has yet formally recognised the PGSA's authority. Several shipping operators have been coordinating with IRGC naval forces under commercial and insurance pressure since February; whether that operational compliance will now transfer to the PGSA as an institution is unclear. The authority has stated that vessels using communication frequencies within its claimed zone require coordination with it, which would in practice mean routing through a new bureaucratic layer sitting above the existing IRGC naval command.

Relations between Iran and the UAE have been severely strained throughout the conflict. Tehran launched missile and drone strikes against Gulf countries, including UAE infrastructure, in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks. Iran accused the UAE of playing an active military role in the war, which Abu Dhabi denied. Against that background, the PGSA map can be read not only as a legal positioning exercise but as a political signal: Tehran regards Gulf states that have been hosting US forces and accelerating bypass infrastructure as parties to the confrontation, not neutral neighbours entitled to undisturbed maritime sovereignty.

The longstanding Abu Musa and Tunb islands dispute runs beneath this, too. Iran has occupied those UAE-claimed islands since 1971, and the PGSA zone's coordinates treat UAE coastal reference points as delimiting markers for Iranian administrative jurisdiction. In Abu Dhabi, that will be read as a provocation layered on top of a grievance that predates the 2026 war by five decades. The US Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain, remains the primary deterrent backstop for Gulf state security architecture, but its posture has not yet visibly shifted in direct response to the PGSA declaration.