The United States and Iran have a deal: For 60 days, Tehran will allow ships to sail through the Strait of Hormuz without charging tolls; in return, Washington will lift its naval blockade, waive sanctions on Iranian oil and help Iran get access to its frozen assets. Negotiations on the future of Iran’s nuclear program are also set to begin.
Even if the deal holds, Iran is poised to emerge from the war battered militarily and economically but strengthened strategically, the newly empowered gatekeeper of the world’s most important energy chokepoint. Other countries will take note — and seek their own chokepoints to exploit.
Though President Trump has declared that the Strait of Hormuz will be “permanently toll-free,” Iran’s grip on the waterway is unlikely to loosen. Over the past three months, its authorities have reportedly charged some ships up to $2 million for passage. Even if fees were much lower than that — say, several hundred thousand dollars per ship, roughly in line with rates at the Suez and Panama Canals — Iran would still receive a multibillion-dollar annuity, giving Tehran an overwhelming financial incentive to preserve its new status.
Controlling the strait also offers Iran considerable strategic benefits. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan is just one of the many world leaders who have appealed to the Iranian government to secure passage for tankers carrying oil to her country, signaling that Tehran is now in a position to cut side deals with governments all over the world. Over time, the Islamic Republic could use its newfound leverage to obtain further sanctions relief and other diplomatic concessions. And of course, any threat to close the strait — explicit or implicit — will provide Iran with a powerful deterrent against military strikes or economic pressure.
Shipowners and energy traders will bristle at paying fees to Iran, but the costs are unlikely to be prohibitive. For a large oil tanker, $2 million amounts to about $1 per barrel of oil, less than a typical credit card transaction fee. Iran’s threats to shipping in the strait have sent insurance rates soaring, with some premiums estimated to have risen to $7.5 million per voyage. If paying Iran guarantees safe passage, insurance costs could fall, offsetting much of the toll. The Greek shipping magnate Evangelos Marinakis, who manages a fleet of over 200 vessels and tankers, has said that he would prefer paying a toll to “all this hassle.”
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may grudgingly reach a similar conclusion. They would be among the biggest losers if their greatest geopolitical rival maintains control over the waterway, but they are also desperate to see the Strait of Hormuz reopened so they can restart their lucrative oil exports at full tilt. These Gulf states could accept an Iranian toll as a necessary, if temporary, evil, as it would buy them time to build new pipelines that circumvent the strait, a project that could take a decade. The deputy prime minister of Qatar has already conceded that a “temporary” fee is “negotiable.”
Though Mr. Trump has been adamant that neither Iran nor its cross-strait neighbor, Oman, can administer the waterway, the past few months have revealed that the United States cannot simply force the strait open. When the U.S. military tried to do so in early May, Iran retaliated aggressively. Within 36 hours, Mr. Trump suspended the mission. That same day, Tehran unveiled the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, a government body to oversee traffic through the waterway. Since then, Iran has steadily entrenched its control.
Iran has been able to do this thanks to cheap drones and missiles, capabilities the United States cannot fully eliminate. Absent regime change, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps will retain the ability to threaten shipping through the strait whenever it chooses.
To keep the strait open, Iran will almost certainly demand compensation. If it does not collect payment directly from shipowners, it will likely extract payment indirectly through sanctions relief. Either way, Tehran will be rewarded for permitting safe passage. And if safe passage depends on Iran’s consent, then Iran controls the strait.
Recognizing this conundrum, Mr. Trump has sought help from other world leaders, notably China’s president, Xi Jinping, in Beijing in May. But Mr. Xi has little incentive to bail Mr. Trump out. As Iran’s largest oil customer, China may well secure preferential treatment for its own shipments, even if other countries end up paying a toll. Besides, Iranian control over the strait could benefit China in the long run by bolstering demand for the energy technologies it dominates. In March, exports of Chinese solar panels and electric vehicles doubled from the previous month, reaching record levels.
If one-fifth of the world’s oil supply is permanently vulnerable to disruption by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, countries will have even greater reason to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and increase imports of Chinese-made solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries. That would also mean the world would exchange one precarious dependence for another.
China’s export restrictions on rare-earth minerals last year offered another lesson in the power of chokepoints. The move forced a major pivot in U.S. policy, spurring Mr. Trump to embrace détente with Beijing and ease export controls on advanced computer chips. Now Iran has shown that closing the Strait of Hormuz can force the world’s most powerful military to stand down. None of this will have escaped the attention of other countries that control chokepoints.
For much of history, exploiting geographic chokepoints was the norm. In the fifth century B.C., Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War by severing its access to the Hellespont (now called the Dardanelles), which Athens relied on for grain imports. The United States fought its first overseas war, in the early 19th century, to stop the Ottoman regency of Tripoli from demanding tribute in exchange for safe passage for American sailors in the Mediterranean. And Denmark extracted tolls at the Danish straits — the so-called Sound Dues, which generated up to two-thirds of the government’s revenue — for over 400 years, until it agreed to abolish them under the 1857 Copenhagen Convention.
Freedom of navigation has largely prevailed since World War II because the United States has guaranteed it. Iran’s seizure of the Strait of Hormuz has cracked the edifice.
“Do we realize 70 percent of East Asia’s energy needs and 70 percent of its trade pass through the Indonesian straits?” asked Indonesia’s president, Prabowo Subianto, at a recent cabinet meeting. Indonesian officials have since denied any plans to impose a toll at the Strait of Malacca, through which roughly a third of all global trade flows. But the fact that the idea was floated signals that the era of free and open global commerce, underwritten by American power, is giving way to something different.
It’s easy to imagine the Houthis in Yemen tightening their grip on the Bab el-Mandeb, the strait separating the Arabian Peninsula from the Horn of Africa; Russia sabotaging undersea internet cables; or China demanding customs duties from ships approaching Taiwanese ports. Indeed, this month, Beijing sent maritime agency ships to question commercial vessels in the waters off Taiwan, a first-of-its-kind mission that Chinese officials called “special maritime traffic law enforcement.”
A generation of U.S. officials endeavored to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, fearing it could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In launching this war, Mr. Trump sought to solve that problem once and for all. The irony is that Iran’s success at the Strait of Hormuz may set off a different kind of arms race — one in which every country searches for chokepoints to convert into money and power.
