Washington turns the Strait of Hormuz into a tollbooth

Editor's note: Imran Khalid, a special commentator for CGTN, is a freelance columnist on international affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The US Navy has set a deadline. The new blockade of Iran begins today at 4 p.m. Eastern time. A day earlier, in a post on his social media account, US President Donald Trump declared that the United States would from now on be known as "the guardian of the Hormuz Strait," and that every country moving cargo through the waterway would owe Washington 20% of its value for the service.  

Read the second half of that sentence again. Not Iran; every country. The move is being marketed as a defense of open seas. It is actually the opposite. Washington has claimed the right to police, tax and close the world's most important oil corridor by announcement, with no UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution, no request to the Gulf states whose exports pass through those waters, and in plain breach of the freedom-of-navigation principle the United States has cited against others for half a century. There is a legal term for stopping ships on the high seas and demanding payment. It is not guardianship.

Let's start with the law, because the law here is not ambiguous. The UN Charter permits force in self-defense or with UNSC authorization. Neither exists in this case. Hormuz is an international strait; under the Law of the Sea, ships of every nation enjoy the right of transit passage, and no coastal or outside power may suspend it. A 20% levy for passage through waters no one owns is not a security policy. It is building a tollbooth over someone else's driveway.

What makes the announcement striking is not only its illegality, it is the hypocrisy stacked on top of it. For weeks, Washington denounced Tehran for merely suggesting it might one day charge commercial vessels to cross the strait. The administration's own senior officials called such tolls a violation of international law, insisting no country may levy charges on an international waterway. The memorandum of understanding the two sides signed in mid-June, the document that briefly halted the fighting, explicitly barred Iran from imposing any such fee.

That agreement is now, by Trump's own account, "over." And the first act after its collapse is for the United States to do precisely what it spent a month condemning Iran for contemplating, at a rate Tehran never even dared to name.

Now weigh the stakes, which are not abstract. Roughly a fifth of the world's traded oil and a large share of its liquefied natural gas move through this single channel. The markets responded within hours. Brent crude climbed almost 4% toward $79 a barrel, US crude rose past $74, and equities slipped as traders priced in a fresh war premium. That was the cost of one social media post.

The deeper problem is who ultimately pays. A 20% charge on cargo is not absorbed in Washington. It flows down the chain to refiners in Asia and Europe, then to households filling tanks and heating homes in economies that have no part in this war. Japan, South Korea and India draw heavily on Gulf crude. A levy dressed as a protection fee is, in effect, a tax imposed by one government on the energy security of all other countries' citizens.

Here the guardianship language collapses. A guardian protects. What is being described is a chokepoint monetized under threat of force, with the security provider and the security threat now hard to tell apart. Shipping insurers grasp the difference even when press releases blur it. Rates spike not because a protector has arrived, but because a great power has turned a trade route into a bargaining chip and backed the claim with sea drones and strikes on Iranian ports.

There is a longer story worth narrating. The postwar order the United States built rested on a simple promise: The seas would stay open, and no one would pay a superpower for the right to trade across them. Freedom-of-navigation operations were its signature. Turning Hormuz into a metered gate squanders that credibility for a revenue line. Allies watching this will draw the obvious lesson about what American protection now costs and what it might cost them next. None of this makes the region safer. None of it reopens the strait for the vessels stranded outside it right now.

The way out is not another salvo. Freedom of navigation cannot be secured by the power that has just suspended it. It requires a return to the ceasefire both sides signed weeks ago, talks conducted between equals rather than dictated from a carrier deck and respect for the sovereignty of the states that actually border these waters. A channel carrying a fifth of the world's oil is too important to be run as a franchise. The blockade takes effect afternoon. The bill, in higher prices and lost trust, will arrive well before any peace does.

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