Iran plans to charge service fees in Strait of Hormuz

The Islamic Republic intends to charge fees to ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, offering exemptions to “friendly nations,” officials announced this weekend, despite US President Donald Trump claiming late last month that Iran had promised him there would be no “CHARGES OF ANY KIND BEING SOUGHT OR RECEIVED BY IRAN ON SHIPS TRAVELING THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ.”Iran's ambassador to China, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, announced Tehran's plans during the World Peace Forum in Beijing on Saturday, claiming that the regime was working in “collaboration and cooperation” with Muscat on “new arrangements” for Hormuz.“As a country where the Hormuz is part of its territorial waters, we will definitely charge service fees,” the official said, denying that such charges were a toll, a notable difference that could decide the legality of Tehran's move.Under Articles 38 and 44 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal states bordering Iran and Oman cannot suspend, impede, or charge tolls for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz.However, military historian Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, a former devil's advocate to Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, previously explained to The Jerusalem Post that there was breathing room for Iran and Oman to charge a fee for services provided.“These new arrangements will be concerning, guaranteeing the security of passage through the Straits of Hormuz, supervision of the passage of the vessels… and also guaranteeing and dealing with the environmental consequences of the massive number of ships,” Fazli said.“We will definitely consider special treatment for the countries that were friendly to us and especially stood by us during the hard times.”Trump: 'Negotiations would end' if fees implementedTrump previously claimed that “negotiations would end” if Iran's alleged promise to Washington, not to seek fees, were false.Under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by Washington and Tehran, Iran agreed to guarantee safe passage through the strait without charging tolls or fees for the initial 60 days.Washington has already accused Tehran of violating the agreement after Iran took hostile action against ships crossing Hormuz outside what Tehran insists is the approved route.Speaking to the Post on Sunday, Nusbacher asserted that, based on the wording of the MoU, Tehran has made clear that it intends to limit free passage to the period stipulated in the MoU and that it expects a new arrangement should the US want to see transit continue without fees beyond the 60-day period.In the meantime, Nusbacher said Tehran has already begun laying the groundwork by offering favorable conditions to countries it considers supportive, conditions that would put American and European cargo at a disadvantage compared to Chinese assets crossing the waterway.American vision of talks a 'fiction' of a robust long-term agreement“What we are seeing is negotiating positions being set forth with public statements rather than being put across a table in a room,” she explained. “The American version of this is designed to support the fiction that there is already a robust, long-term agreement in place, that the memorandum of understanding is something other than yet another shonky ceasefire.”Deepening the crisis for Washington's position is that Tehran “does not feel constrained to change its position” on developing nuclear weapons or even ballistic weapons, and the regime has been allowed to continue supporting its network of proxies, free from the economic pressure of sanctions, “leaving Iran with all the freedom to operate that it has ever wanted.”Though Nusbacher said there was still a chance for a new agreement, she stressed it was no longer possible for Washington to achieve any of its pre-war objectives and that Israel's government was paying the price for a collective failure to capitalize on the achievements of the war.“The only difference” between before the war and now “is that Iran can now shut down a vital choke point at will. So, the only way there is a long-term agreement concluded is if the United States will stomach the continuation of the Iranian nuclear program as it was, just knocked back a few months or years,” she concluded.