"Iran's decision to let Chinese-owned vessels pass could be part of its negotiations with the U.S., because Iran needs diplomatic help from China" [diplomatic help from China]
This quote directly names the mechanism: Iran uses selective chokepoint access for Chinese ships as a bargaining chip in US-Iran negotiations, confirming that passage rights are allocated by geopolitical utility.
Reasoning from this article
The article documents a clear pattern: Chinese and Greek vessels with Iran ties received passage permits while South Korean and Saudi tankers were denied or forced to use covert southern routes. This is not random enforcement failure but structured differentiation — Iran is rationing access to the world's most critical oil chokepoint by diplomatic alignment. The same mechanism (chokepoint access as tiered diplomatic leverage) is replicable in other contested straits such as the Taiwan Strait or Bab-el-Mandeb, wherever a regional power controls a maritime bottleneck and faces great-power negotiation pressure.