The US had the power to start the war. The US doesn't have the power to stop the war.
The war ends when all involved parties agree that it ends, not because one party is tired of it.
The only way the US alone can end the war in Iran is to ensure complete surrender, and then stay put for 20 years like Iraq and Afghanistan, only to leave like a thief in the night and things reverts to what they were before, only with more local hate for the US than was already there (as most islamic states sees the US as the great devil).
I think most European nations learned their lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of those were NATO operations btw. Article 5 was invoked for Afghanistan, but the NATO contribution was limited to a naval operation and patrolling of US airspace. NATO is a defensive treaty, not an aggressive one. The actual ground invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq was done by a US led coalition of the willing, and when the US started the Iran war, most european leaders openly declared that this was not europes war.
Bombing Iran for a month because Iran fired on 4 ships that were violating its SoH rules is wildly disproportionate and optional.
This kind of shit or excuses could not be pulled if we would be talking about gulf of mexico for example.
US is not center of the world and rest of the world means >95% of mankind, rest of the world is pretty fed up with that unfair treatment and things are changing. Very slowly, but steadily.
Who cares? International law is quite clear. But regardless, the world really doesn't have a say so long as Iran (& likely Oman in the end) wants to enforce this view.
> but maybe they bomb a port in iran and iran strikes a us base in response
...and the strait will still be closed. It just makes zero sense.
Yes, until the US bombed Iran and then signed a terrible MoU that didn't reject Iranians claim of control of the said waterway…
As former French Ambassador Gerard Araud puts it, the US diplomacy has been deeply incompetent during the negotiations and they gave way too much to Iran in the MoU. As a result, at this point the US cannot realy claim Iran is infringing international laws anymore (not that international laws matter to the current US admin anyway)