At the narrow passage between Iran and Oman — through which a third of the world's seaborne oil flows daily — an attempt to build shared rules for safe passage has stumbled before it could begin. A diplomatic meeting on Strait of Hormuz security has been postponed, a quiet but telling sign that the parties involved could not yet agree on enough to make sitting down worthwhile. In the long history of efforts to govern this chokepoint through dialogue rather than confrontation, delays like this one are rarely accidental — they are the shape that unresolved mistrust takes when it meets a calendar