View from Musandam: Sanction busting in the Strait of Hormuz

They move best at night, in a swarm. Twenty, maybe 25 small boats side-by-side. Up to 100 boats at a time: “Waterworld” without Kevin Costner. Simple speedboats, around six meters long, each with a powerful engine, traversing the fabled Strait of Hormuz with precious cargo. Back and forth from Iran to Musandam, Oman, loading and unloading.

If you’ve ever wondered how ordinary Iranians get around US primary sanctions, this is it. This is smuggling, 2024 style.

Some captains disgorge their goods to other boats out at sea under cover of darkness — boats that then head into UAE waters. But most plow on to dock at the busy harbor in Khasab, Musandam.

Where the Arabian peninsula spikes out up into a sharp point, separating the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman, only 21 nautical miles south of Iran, lies Musandam. On a clear day, you can see the Iranian coast across the shipping lanes where a quarter of the world’s oil consumption passes through. It looks nothing like the rest of Arabia. Craggy cliffs drop perpendicular to the sea, as if the fjords of Norway or Greenland were transplanted to a desert landscape. Barren rock meets blue sea, blue sky.

Almost all of the spike is in the United Arab Emirates, except for this very tip. In a quirk of history, this is not an Emirate. Musandam is an exclave of Oman, the Sultanate way down south beyond the UAE. Back in 1971, the Brits invaded Musandam and took it from the local tribe, handing it instead to the Omani sultan who they’d just backed in a coup. It might be mile upon mile of just barren rock, but it is incredibly strategically important barren rock.

Khasab, the only real town in Musandam, is a sleepy fishing village living in quite the different century from the glitz and futurism of Dubai, just 130 miles down the road. By day, goats patrol the sun drenched streets of the harbor looking for trash to eat. Ancient dhows line up, hoping to take out the few day-trippers seeking the solitude of the coast. But by night, a hive of activity develops as wave after wave of speedboat dock.

What’s going on, we ask. Fishing boats, is the answer, as we see a crane lift a car up and onto a small boat barely bigger than the car. Cargo safely loaded, it speeds off into the darkness.

Three years ago you barely saw these boats — certainly not without the cover of darkness. Now, they’re legion. While they may move best at night, the boat captains — both men and women — visibly ply their trade in the mornings and evenings now too.

From Iran comes fish and livestock: sheep and goats, ready to go to market in the UAE and Oman. Plus, cheap petrol and diesel fuel. Exotic animals bought for private zoos across the Gulf are easily trafficked this way too, it’s said. Rumors are rife that this is how opium and hashish finds their way out.

Everything else heads north. Boxes of white goods piled high: TVs, fridges, satellite dishes. Toiletries, medicines, alcohol, and cosmetics. We spoke with a man with an American accent, origin undetermined. He was selling power tools. For each consignment he took delivery of two boatloads of diesel fuel, offloaded from the smugglers’ speedboat onto another while still at sea.

The smuggling trade dwindled during the late Obama-era as sanctions began to be lifted but it came back, big time, Khasab residents say. Bigger than ever thanks to the regional conflict in which Iran is enmeshed.

By morning most of the Iranian entrepreneurs have headed home, hoping to evade the coastguards of the Islamic Republic that patrol their coastline night and day. Despite sometimes losing their goods or paying to get them through, nothing deflects this smuggling swarm. They’ll be back in Khasab again as night falls.

Camilla Wright is a media commentator and writer for global news and pop culture outlets, and publishes Britain’s biggest and best known newsletter.