Strait of Hormuz Iran announced this week that it had lifted its naval blockade of the world's busiest oil passage and replaced it with a Naval Hug, an embrace of all passing shipping that officials noted was warm, respectful, and probably unwelcome, but more like 'workplace flirting' than 'Human Resources involvement'.
The American Vice President told reporters the Strait was 'really open, probably a little too open, and everyone was uncomfortable with it,' while maritime tracking data showed it dark, impassable, and just a blockade with a different name.
A treaty ending the war, signed over dinner of Big Macs and Freedom Fries at some snooty French palace, was contradicted days later by a second treaty signed by Pakistan. Iran denies signing anything, 'we thought we were paying the check.'
Each government now maintains its own version of the ocean. As of Tuesday, the Strait of Hormuz was simultaneously open, closed, at war, at peace, and has fled the war-torn region, immigrated to Canada, and declared asylum. Its temporary visa permits it to work as a hydroelectric power-generation waterway.
The Embrace Is Not an HR Violation
Officials were careful to explain the 'hug' was not a violation of the 'Hormuz Resolution' section of the peace treaty. Whereas a blockade stops ships and is forbidden under the ceasefire, a Naval Hug permits close contact and even prolonged touching on the backside of the vessels. The distinction allows for unilateral coziness and erection of on-deck scaffolding to facilitate future negotiations.
Foreign crews were encouraged to reframe their detention as a moment of closeness. Vessels are not being held, the Ministry said, but cherished, indefinitely, at a chokepoint through which roughly a quarter of the world's seaborne oil is cherished each day.
Americans Enthusiastically Knock Out Reciprocal Greeting
The United States has responded very warmly, over 4,000 degrees Centigrade warmly, with an absolute banger retort they have branded as 'Percussive Peace'. Because both governments have agreed to stop fighting, officials noted, anything that happens after the agreement is by definition not fighting. The current environment is less 'open battle' and more 'homoerotic antagonism'.
Both sides are being actively monitored by the Institute for the Study of War, now renamed the Institute for the Suspicion of Wordsmithing. Analysts describe the region as stable, in the sense that every party is equally and confidently wrong.
Pakistan, which helped craft the original ceasefire, is studying the newfound friendship in hopes of applying a similar arrangement to Kashmir, where any resulting violence could be blamed, as always, on a terrorist cell it insists it does not host.
The Only Neutral Party
The single attempt to establish the Strait's actual condition was made by a sea turtle, which entered the waterway carrying, per treaty, both a Hug Permit and a Ceasefire Transit Visa. The two documents canceled each other out, leaving the animal in a jurisdictional vacuum recognized by no navy and claimed, for tax purposes, by three different countries.
The turtle is considered a fair proxy for commercial traffic, moving at approximately the same speed as a supertanker. All traffic will now be challenged with the question "What is the water-speed velocity of an unladen sea turtle?" The only correct response is "What do you mean? A Green or Hawksbill Sea Turtle?" at which point the guard will immediately be cast into a nearby deep-sea trench.
By week's end all parties were requesting the Strait abandon its asylum claim and return to the Middle East so that everyone still had something to fight about.
