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The strategic Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints, has emerged as the center of a escalating global geopolitical standoff, with multiple Asian economies reliant on Gulf energy already securing individual safe passage agreements with Tehran even ahead of a harsh deadline set by former U.S. President Donald Trump.

On Monday, Trump issued an aggressive ultimatum to Iran, threatening that the United States could eliminate the Islamic Republic “in one night” if Tehran did not reach an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. EDT Tuesday (1 a.m. GMT Wednesday). The threat marked a sharp escalation of tensions that erupted after Iran retaliated for joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes by vowing to target transiting vessels in the waterway.

Roughly 20% of the world’s total energy shipments pass through the narrow strait annually, and the threat of disrupted transit has sent global oil prices soaring in recent weeks. While Trump has insisted the U.S. does not rely on Gulf crude and has repeatedly pressured energy-dependent nations to deploy their own warships and lead efforts to reopen the route, many Asian countries have opted for direct bilateral diplomacy with Iran instead. That approach has already yielded tangible results, though major questions about the scope and durability of these agreements remain unanswered.

The Philippines is the most recent country to formalize a deal. According to Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro, Iranian officials guaranteed “safe, unhindered and expeditious passage” for all Philippines-flagged vessels following a productive phone conversation between the two sides last Thursday. Lazaro described the agreement as “vital” for protecting the country’s energy and fertilizer supplies. For the Philippines, the deal comes at a critical moment: the nation imports 98% of its oil from the Middle East, and was the first country to declare a national energy emergency after domestic petrol prices more than doubled following the outbreak of the latest Iran war.

Iran’s willingness to strike a deal with the Philippines, a longstanding U.S. ally, suggests the Islamic Republic is willing to separate security alignments from active participation in the ongoing conflict, analysts note. “Iran appears to be distinguishing between a country’s alliance and its active participation in the conflict,” explained Roger Fouquet, a senior researcher at the National University of Singapore’s Energy Studies Institute, adding that this compartmentalization of relations makes the Philippine deal a particularly notable test case.

The Philippines is far from alone in securing safe passage guarantees. On March 28, Pakistan announced that Iran had approved passage for 20 Pakistani-flagged vessels through the strait. Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar hailed the arrangement as “a welcome and constructive gesture by Iran and deserves appreciation,” adding that “Dialogue, diplomacy and such confidence-building measures are the only way forward.”

Iran has also explicitly welcomed Indian-flagged tankers to transit the route. “Our Indian friends are in safe hands, no worries,” the Iranian Embassy in India posted on the social platform X last week, responding to a prior statement from the embassy’s South African office that only Iran and Oman would hold authority over the strait’s future. India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar confirmed in March that the safe passage of Indian tankers was the product of quiet diplomatic engagement between the two nations.

China, the world’s largest purchaser of Iranian oil, has also confirmed that multiple Chinese vessels have recently transited the strait following coordination with relevant parties. “Following coordination with relevant parties, three Chinese vessels recently transited the Strait of Hormuz. We express our gratitude to the relevant parties for the assistance provided,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters, though Beijing offered no further details on the arrangement. Vessel tracking data shows that millions of barrels of Iranian oil, which is under U.S. sanctions, have been delivered to China in recent weeks despite the ongoing conflict. Beijing maintains close friendly diplomatic ties with Tehran and has joined Pakistan in efforts to broker a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Other nations have also secured limited safe passage agreements. Over the weekend, Japanese shipping firm Mitsui OSK Lines confirmed that a Japanese liquefied natural gas carrier had transited the strait, and that “The safety of the vessel and all crew members have been confirmed.” The firm declined to comment on whether any fees were paid or how safe passage was secured. In March, Malaysia announced that several of its tankers had been cleared for transit by Tehran, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim thanking Iran’s president for facilitating the passage. Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke credited the country’s “good diplomatic relationship with the Iranian government” for the agreement, though it remains unclear whether all Malaysian-flagged vessels will receive the same guarantee. Roughly two-thirds of Malaysia’s oil imports originate in the Gulf, making the strait critical to the country’s economy.

Despite the string of bilateral agreements, major uncertainties remain. Shipping analyst Dimitris Maniatis, of the consultancy Marisks, notes that it is still unclear whether the Iranian guarantees apply only to specific approved vessels or to all ships flagged under a given country. There is also no public clarity on whether nations paid for safe passage, or what terms were agreed to for the arrangements. A further open question is whether shippers will begin reflagging tankers from open registries like Panama and the Marshall Islands, which have not secured safe passage guarantees, to nations that already hold agreements with Tehran.

While the spate of bilateral deals marks a diplomatic breakthrough for energy-dependent nations, Roc Shi, an energy researcher from the University of Technology Sydney, emphasizes that the agreements do not resolve the core standoff. “While these agreements mark a ‘diplomatic breakthrough’, it is not a resolution to the problem,” Shi noted, adding that it remains unknown how long the guarantees will hold, and how ongoing military operations in the region will impact future transits.

Deep inside the Cambodian border town of O Smach, behind the shuttered Royal Hill casino, a six-story building stands pockmarked with shrapnel damage from a December cross-border air strike. When the BBC, granted access by occupying Thai military forces, walked its dark, dust-choked corridors, each door opened to a chilling window into one of the world’s largest cross-border online fraud operations.

Behind one door, a full-scale replica of a Vietnamese bank had been constructed to fool victims. Another was fitted to mimic an Australian police station, complete with a Chinese police uniform hanging on a wall. Hand-painted motivational slogans in Chinese — one reading “Money Coming From Everywhere” — still line the walls, scattered with crumpled counterfeit $100 bills left behind when thousands of trapped scam workers fled after the bombing. This was not a casino, but a sprawling forced labor scam compound, where trafficked workers defrauded countless victims across the globe of their life savings under brutal, regimented control.

The compound’s current status is wrapped in a brief but tense border dispute. In December, the Thai Air Force carried out airstrikes on Royal Hill, claiming Cambodian military drones were being launched from the site during a short outbreak of cross-border fighting. The bombardment shattered windows, blew gaping holes in roofs and walls, and forced the compound’s workers to flee abruptly, leaving half-eaten noodle bowls, half-empty soda cans, and a stale, acrid stench in their wake. Today, only Thai soldiers patrol the empty site. The Thai military invited the BBC to expose the scale of Cambodia’s transnational scam industry, framing the visit as a call for international action against what they call a regional scourge — a move that also serves to justify their December cross-border strikes. Cambodia has formally protested Thai occupation of the territory, while Thailand argues its troop presence adheres to the post-ceasefire agreement that froze forces in their end-of-conflict positions.

What makes the Royal Hill compound particularly revealing is how it operated in complete obscurity for years, even as neighboring O Smach Casino, owned by high-profile Cambodian tycoon Ly Yong Phat, had already been named in reports of abuse by escaped scam workers. Ly Yong Phat, a senior figure in Cambodia’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party with close ties to the powerful Hun clan led by former Prime Minister Hun Sen, has already been sanctioned by the U.S. and other nations for alleged involvement in human trafficking and online fraud. By contrast, Royal Hill’s owner Lim Heng has maintained an extraordinarily low public profile, never appearing on international sanctions lists. Like many connected to the ruling elite, Lim Heng was awarded the Cambodian noble title Neak Oknha by Hun Sen — an honor requiring a minimum $500,000 donation to the state, placing him among a small circle of just a few hundred elite Cambodian powerbrokers. The only publicly known unusual detail about Lim Heng is his habit of paying respects at the cremation site of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, located near another of his northern border casinos.

The rise of scam compounds like Royal Hill is rooted in decades of political and economic change in Cambodia. After the 1991 end of the Cambodian civil war, well-connected tycoons amassed vast fortunes by acquiring large land tracts through their ties to the ruling family. Early wealth came from illegal logging and agricultural plantations, followed by windfalls from a Chinese-investor-fueled urban property boom. In border regions like O Smach, casinos became the most profitable venture, capitalizing on strict gambling bans in neighboring Thailand and China. Over three decades, the Cambodian government issued roughly 200 casino licenses, drawing the interest of Chinese organized crime syndicates that added lucrative unregulated online gambling operations on site.

The shift to large-scale online fraud came in 2019, after international pressure from China forced Hun Sen to ban online gambling, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic that halted cross-border tourism. With their core revenue streams cut off, criminal syndicates pivoted to transnational online fraud, luring thousands of young workers from across the globe with false promises of high-paying clerical or tech jobs. Some workers knew they would be participating in illicit activity, but none were prepared for the brutal conditions inside the compounds.

Documents recovered by the BBC from Royal Hill’s rubble lay bare the brutal disciplinary regime workers faced. Anyone who failed to generate a single “lead” — an initial contact with a potential victim to build an online relationship — in one day received five cane strokes. Three straight days without a lead resulted in a minimum of 10 strokes. Even casual conversation with coworkers or failure to share personal intimate photos to trick victims into trusting scammers earned the same corporal punishment. Escapee Wilson, a young Ugandan man recruited to Royal Hill in August, described even harsher abuse to the BBC. “Some people were electrocuted. Some were put into the black room. They have a room called The Black Room where terrible torture went on,” he said from Phnom Penh, where a local charity shelters him as he waits for repatriation.

Wilson said he was lured with an offer for a digital marketing job in Malaysia, only to be trafficked to the Cambodian compound. He described being forced to work 15 to 16 hour days, following rigid scripts written by Chinese bosses and using AI to alter his voice and appearance to match his assigned persona: “You are supposed to portray the character of a woman, who is 37 years old, rich, and who wants a husband. You chat to these older Americans with the intention of making them think you have fallen in love with them. So, in the script, there’s a point where you break them emotionally. You build trust, and then later on you can lure them into buying the products.” Wilson added that workers were even forced to return to their posts immediately after bomb blasts during the December air strike: “Every time we would hear a bomb – the building would sometimes shake – we would run out. We were scared. But then we had to come back in and work again.”

The BBC found scam scripts and operational rules in multiple languages tailored to target victims across the globe. Lateness resulted in fines, and workers had to request permission to use the toilet. One recovered “Employee Outing Registration Form” meticulously logged every bathroom break taken by workers in the days before the air strike, including the exact amount of time each worker spent away from their desk. Next to a fully built replica Brazilian police station, rows of soundproofed booths were set up for scammers to make calls, with handwritten notes in Portuguese reminding scammers of tactics to gain victims’ trust. One recovered fake document was a convincing forged summons from Sao Paolo police accusing a victim of money laundering — a common blackmail tactic to scare targets into transferring funds or surrendering sensitive bank account information.

For years, the Cambodian government largely ignored growing international outcry over the ballooning scam industry and its linked human rights abuses. The 2025 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report accused the Cambodian government of failing to take meaningful action to eliminate the trade, noting that no high-profile scam compound owner or operator had ever been arrested or prosecuted. When the U.S. imposed sanctions on Ly Yong Phat in September 2024 over his links to fraud and forced labor, the ruling party demanded the sanctions be withdrawn, accusing the U.S. of violating Cambodian sovereignty.

Earlier this year, however, sustained international pressure from the U.S., China and other global powers forced the Cambodian government to make an abrupt policy shift. National police have raided dozens of suspected scam compounds, and Prime Minister Hun Manet pledged to fully shut down the entire cross-border scam industry by the end of April, acknowledging that the illegal trade was destroying Cambodia’s international reputation and damaging its legitimate economy.

The most high-profile move came in January, when Cambodian authorities arrested and extradited to China Chen Zhi, a young Chinese entrepreneur who had become one of Cambodia’s most influential insiders. Chen Zhi, who had acquired Cambodian citizenship and served as a personal adviser to Hun Sen, ran the Prince Group — a conglomerate that owned a national bank, an airline, and massive property developments across the country. Sanctioned by both the U.S. and UK in 2024 for running a vast fraud-funded corporate network, Chen Zhi had seemed untouchable for years. But after his arrest, footage circulated of him being led hooded and handcuffed off a plane to China, where he now awaits trial on charges of running a cross-border fraud and gambling syndicate. His high-profile extradition sent a clear signal that the government was willing to sacrifice top-tier figures connected to the scam industry to salvage Cambodia’s global standing. Authorities followed Chen Zhi’s extradition with the extradition of Li Xiong, chairman of Huione Pay, an online payment platform accused of laundering billions in scam profits.

Today, many scam compounds across Cambodia sit empty, and authorities say more than 10,000 trafficked foreign workers have been repatriated. But many more, like Wilson, still remain stuck in Cambodia waiting to return home. And despite the government’s bold pledges, analysts remain skeptical that the crackdown will mark the end of cross-border scams in the country.

Critics compare raid operations to a game of whack-a-mole: it is simple for syndicates to relocate workers to new, unreported lower-profile compounds, and thousands of workers are believed to have chosen to remain in Cambodia rather than face poverty at home. Beyond the high-profile arrest of Chen Zhi, none of the Cambodian tycoons accused of hosting scam compounds behind their casino operations have faced legal action. Ly Yong Phat, Try Pheap and Kok An — all wealthy, powerful elite figures sanctioned by foreign governments for their links to scams — still live freely and comfortably in Cambodia. In a striking irony, both Ly Yong Phat and Kok An, who hold senate seats, recently voted in favor of a new anti-scam law the government says will impose harsh penalties on scam operators.

As for Lim Heng, the little-known tycoon who built Royal Hill, his name had never appeared in any public reporting or investigation into Cambodia’s scam industry — until Thai forces crossed the border and seized his compound.

For five consecutive weeks, one of Islam’s holiest sites has stood empty, a situation that has stoked regional tensions and drawn accusations of Western diplomatic double standards across the Muslim world. Now, a senior leader of the Islamic Waqf, the body tasked with administering Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, is publicly demanding Western governments step in to pressure Israel to reverse its sweeping restrictions and uphold long-standing agreements governing the sacred site.

Israel imposed a total entry ban on all Muslim worshippers to the Al-Aqsa compound starting February 28, the same day it launched a joint military campaign against Iran alongside the United States, citing unsubstantiated security threats. The ban has remained in place through key religious milestones on the Islamic calendar, including Friday congregational prayers, Eid al-Fitr, and Laylat al-Qadr – one of the holiest nights of the year for Muslim believers. For nearly the entire holy month of Ramadan, the mosque and its sprawling ancient courtyards sat vacant, forcing thousands of Muslim worshippers to gather for prayers on the narrow streets surrounding the Old City instead.

In an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye, Mustafa Abu Sway, deputy chairman of the Islamic Waqf council, warned the ongoing closure and creeping Israeli control of the site poses a direct threat to stability across the entire Middle East. “If we care about regional stability, Western governments must issue clear statements reaffirming their commitment to preserving the Status Quo, which will prevent Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from inflicting further irreversible damage,” Abu Sway said. “A strong public statement would send an unambiguous message to Israel that it cannot tamper with Jerusalem’s holy sites.”

Muslim Palestinians have expressed widespread frustration over what they view as stark double standards in Western policy toward religious access in Jerusalem. Just one week before the interview, the United States, Italy, Spain, the Vatican, and other international actors issued harsh condemnations of Israel after it barred Catholic leaders from accessing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Palm Sunday services. That public outcry forced Netanyahu to reverse the restriction within hours. By comparison, the five-week total ban on Muslim access to Al-Aqsa has been met with complete silence from Western capitals.

Jordanian MP Saleh al-Armouti, who heads the parliamentary bloc of the Islamic Action Front, praised the Vatican’s intervention on behalf of Christian worshippers while calling for similar action to reopen Al-Aqsa. “I call on the Pope to publicly demand the reopening of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,” al-Armouti said.

Restrictions across the Old City, which houses Al-Aqsa alongside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall, have been unevenly enforced. While limits on access to Christian and Jewish holy sites have been loosened at times, the closure of Al-Aqsa has remained rigidly in place. Weeks before the full closure, Al-Aqsa’s leading imam, Sheikh Muhammad al-Abbasi, was arrested by Israeli forces directly inside the mosque’s courtyards.

A coalition of eight Muslim-majority nations, led by Jordan, has repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to lift the entry ban and reopen the site to Muslim worshippers. In an early March joint statement, the group condemned the restrictions as a “flagrant violation” of international law and the long-standing principle of unrestricted access to houses of worship. The statement also reaffirmed that Jordan’s Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs is the only legal body with exclusive jurisdiction over Al-Aqsa, and that Israel has no valid claim to control the site. A second joint statement issued by the same bloc last week reaffirmed the demand, citing binding legal and historical Status Quo agreements – and was again ignored by the Israeli government.

The Status Quo arrangements that govern access and administration of Jerusalem’s holy sites date back to the 19th century. Under the terms of this agreement, Al-Aqsa is managed by the Waqf under Jordanian custodianship. When Israel seized full control of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, it formally recognized the Status Quo and acknowledged that Muslim authorities retain exclusive control over access, security, and the religious character of the Al-Aqsa compound.

On-the-ground reporting from Middle East Eye confirms a heavy, intimidating Israeli military presence remains deployed across the area surrounding Al-Aqsa, with soldiers positioned to block any attempted entry by worshippers. Internal sources familiar with the situation tell MEE that Israeli interference extends far beyond the entry ban on worshippers. Israeli police have also barred nearly all Waqf staff from entering the compound to carry out critical maintenance work, capping entry at just 25 employees out of the Waqf’s total workforce of roughly 1,000.

This creeping encroachment has fueled widespread fears that Israel intends to permanently alter the long-standing governing rules of the site once it reopens, including reallocating space or prayer time to Jewish ultranationalist groups. While Israel’s chief rabbinate has formally banned Jewish prayer on the Al-Aqsa compound – which is believed to sit atop the site of the ancient Jewish Second Temple – ultranationalist Israeli groups have increasingly staged incursions into the compound and conducted unauthorized Jewish prayers there, with open political backing from senior government figures including Ben Gvir.

Abu Sway ruled out any possibility of a compromise that would alter the Status Quo, noting that Jordan’s King Abdullah II has repeatedly declared Al-Aqsa a red line that cannot be violated. “King Abdullah has made clear there will be no time sharing, no space sharing at Al-Aqsa. He has left no room for doubt on this position,” Abu Sway said. “I am grateful that Jordan has our full backing. Without Jordanian support, Israel would have a completely free hand to alter the character of Al-Aqsa. Jordan will never compromise on the Status Quo.”