>The debate about the strait is becoming a wider one about security in the Gulf. Writing in Le Monde, Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, the Oman foreign minister, argued that the whole premise of Washington’s Iran policy was flawed.

>“The combination of excessive local defence spending, the expansion of US bases in the Gulf and an over-the-horizon protective presence was developed and maintained at great cost but to very little real purpose.

>“The war has revealed that containment was a myth, a reality acknowledged now even by those who had previously been persuaded that more than 45 years of costly containment was a necessary evil. The gravest threats to the security of the Gulf come not from within the Gulf itself but from decisions and actions taken outside it, above all in Tel Aviv.”