New Delhi, July 2 -- DUBAI - Eight thousand seafarers are stranded inside the Gulf, waiting. The problem is not a diplomatic one. The Islamabad MoU established two temporary corridors through the Strait of Hormuz on June 17. The Doha talks this week addressed the toll question and the broader Hormuz framework. What neither the MoU nor the Doha talks have yet produced is mine clearance in the Traffic Separation Scheme - the central shipping channel through which roughly 130 vessels transited daily before the conflict. That channel is unusable. The mines are still there.

22 transits on June 18, 19 on June 19, 28 on June 20. Eighty mines are reported to be blocking the primary route ahead of any formal reopening.

The memorandum assigns Ira...