I wish it need not have happened in my time
Why are you taking what the Trump admin says at face value, anyways? Are you still a fool after all these years? This is like "fool me a 10,000th time" by now haaha
This statement is very rarely true.
If there was another route, the oil would have found the way.
Five years at 2mil per ship will make Iran rich.
had the US had any real plan to empower the Gulf states against Iran there would already be backup routes
Actually, this is extortion. Meaning that it is done under threat of violence. Worse yet, the US military may end up enforcing this, and collecting on a share of the fees.
It won't take very long for Iran to recoup the damages. After that, why keep the fees going? Because it's free money, that's why.
The strange this is, if the US and Iran can partner on this, that would lead to a weird peace, because they both stand to benefit, meanwhile countries that depend on the straight (Korea, Japan, etc.) have to pay the bill.
not really; you would have to pay to run an oil pipeline through another country's territory even if that country wasn't bearing the cost of maintaining the oil pipeline
the strait isn't international waters -- it's part of Iran and Oman's territorial waters
So basically, Iran say "here, you have to pass through our or Oman's waters, we will let you, but please pay a toll for the derangement, that we will share with Oman."
There are massive maintenance costs for the open sea with how we utilize it. Maritime security and policing, navigational infrastructure, weather reporting, radio repeaters, international bureaucracy, etc.
Global maritime trade is extremely costly. It's simply hidden behind opaque public spending on things you don't think about. In all likelihood it's a sunk cost that would ballpark around a few hundred billion dollars annually, invisible money spent just to keep things running at the scale and reliability that they do.
Now the maritime traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz may only partially overlap with this spending, but people greatly overestimate just how "cheap" maritime activity actually is.
This conflict has been an interesting case of watching mass hysteria interact with propaganda in the newform, rapid pace of media that exists in the internet age. The amount of wild conjecture, speculation, misinformation is the most extreme I've ever seen it, eclipsing even the 6 months of nonsense that was spurred on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It’s just Pax for those parts of the world that America and its allies are not invading (and other non-allied examples like Russia invading Ukraine).
But a typical top-comment about how America Did a Bad Thing Which Ruined The Good American-lead Times.
Aren't you making the very point you purport to refute? What's so different about this than Rome circa 50 BC? They even invaded Persia!
An American Iranian expert which studied this region for 20 years predicted that Iran will do a nuclear test in September, ahead of the mid-term elections. We'll see.
Oh crud I just opened a can of worms with that, didn't I?
edit: And it seems I was wrong despite it being my initial thought in terms of used rail.
Links to Pakistan and Israel statements here: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/8/us-iran-ceasefire-de...
Also, I really wouldn't suggest using aljazeera.
Details on this deal are sketchy but it seems like Iran will continue charging a toll for the Strait of Hormuz (of approximately $1/barrel). You hear figures like $2 million but bear in mind that VLCCs/ULCCs can carry 2M+ barrels of oil. Also, it seems like there will be significant sanctions relief.
Here's the problem: how does Iran get paid? Normally that would be through international payments systems but the US exerts a lot of control over those and can freeze assets as they've done in the past. Part of the payments under the previous JCPOA [3] were to return money paid to Iran for oil where those payments had been frozen. Russia got locked out of SWIFT after the Ukraine invasion [4] as another example.
So I see this as a defensive and potentially temporary move to avoid the risk of asset seizure and freezing should hostilities resume. Iran may well end up with access to international payments systems again in the coming weeks, at which point this could all change.
It is interesting that crypto is being used for this but that just goes to the point that the use case for crypto is to bypass laws. That's no different here.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIFT_ban_against_Russian_bank...
The US being able to just cut off people from the financial system is seen as very problematic by anyone outside the US.
>“Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in Bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,” FT reported, citing Hosseini.
https://beincrypto.com/iran-bitcoin-toll-hormuz-strait-tanke...
Is there a chance that the US -wanted- the strait closed so they could look like they got it to reopen, now with fees, which ultimately funnel back to the US?
It would be a way to exploit the natural resources of the Middle East without needing to invade.
I bet Trump will justify it as compensation for US “security” guarantees to Gulf States.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5821343-trump-us-ir...
Also of course if you want to profit, you can always just insider trade! A favorite of the administration. Someone bet a cool billion just yesterday that oil prices would go down. And would you believe it.
pavlov•2h ago
“He said that the tariff is $1 per barrel of oil, adding that empty tankers can pass freely.
“‘Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,’ Hosseini added.”
gustavus•1h ago
"few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,’ Hosseini added"
Maybe I'm ignorant of Bitcoin but isn't Bitcoin transactions recorded in a public cryptographically signed ledger? Isn't that literally the opposite of "can't be traced"?
zulux•1h ago
mbreese•20m ago
deltoidmaximus•1h ago
tomasphan•1h ago
CapricornNoble•5m ago
iugtmkbdfil834•1h ago
palata•1h ago
polivier•1h ago
insane_dreamer•1h ago
dist-epoch•14m ago
jmclnx•1h ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-warns-tankers-they...
What is to stop the ships from lying ? I wonder if Iran will do spot check of some ships to prevent this. And will boarding ships cause Trump to have yet another breakdown ?
bethekidyouwant•1h ago
onlypassingthru•39m ago