The March 2023 agreement restoring Saudi-Iranian diplomatic relations, brokered in Beijing over four days of talks that surprised most Western analysts by the speed and apparent completeness of their outcome, was described at the time as a potential transformation of Gulf security dynamics. The more accurate framing is that it was a managed reduction in operational hostility between two states whose fundamental interests remain incompatible and whose competition for regional influence has been paused, not resolved. The strait has been somewhat quieter since the agreement. The conditions that make it dangerous have not changed.