The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel.
The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars.
If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.
> The Straight of Hormuz is open to any country willing to pay $2M per voyage. Any country except the U.S. and Israel.
The straight is not physically closed by Iran. It's closed by insurance companies which asking a very high war risk insurance premiums. Even if you pay $2M it unlikely will reduce the cost of insurance. That's why very few ships are choosing this option (and some of them are shadow fleet tankers which probably have no insurance).
well, you can view it Iranian are willing to insure the vessel for $2M fee - that it will not get hit by them during the crossing ;). Once they are in the Oman sea, they can use traditional insurance.
You can view it like that, but most people don't. At least the people involved manning those tankers don't.
And why should them? It appears that the Iranian armed forces started acted quite autonomously, by design. They know that communications are not secure, so local commanders have a very high latitude in what actions they deem correct to take. If such a commander deems that asking and collecting $2 MM per vessel is a good idea, they'll do it. But if another commander thinks that sinking a passing vessel is what their standing orders are, they'll do it too, not being aware that the toll was paid. So, if you are the captain of such a vessel, what do you do? Do you complain to Iran for not holding their end of the bargain?
I mean ships are going through right now, so clearly at least some people do view it like that.
People work on dangerous fishing trawlers because of the $. People can be found who risk their life for money.
Right, clearly you can always find people to ship oil through the strait. So the whole notion that nobody will use it because it's dangerous is nonsense.
If you read what I said, it was that "most people won't do it", not that nobody will do it. From the point of view of worldwide oil supply, what most tanker captains do matters more than what a few exceptions do.
They are all in a whatsapp or telegram together.
this is not how the maritime industry works in any way.
It seems Iran sent a notice to the UN recently declaring the straight closed, which, uh, no. But sure.
Seems pretty unlikely that the Yuan is going to be the dominant world currency, given its capital controls.
It would legitimately be hilarious though if the result of this conflict was iran being the one to enact regime change. In terms of the global order
Heh. Trump asks the oracle at Delphi what will happen if he launches the war.
“The war will surely achieve regime change,” replies the oracle.
“Great, let’s go,” says Trump, who never read Herodotus.
That's what will happen due to iran's dickhead move...
Being bombed does not mean it can target non-combatant countries without consequences... Nor does it mean it can start tolling ships $2M per voyages...
Now that current iran regime has learnt it can do those things...
what choice do the gulf nations, or even all the asian+european (strait users) nations have?
Form a coalition against iran, and send troops to change the regime...
even if US backs away, the others will finish the job
> iran's dickhead move...
Remind me again, which country started this whole mess?
> what choice do the gulf nations, or even all the asian+european (strait users) nations have?
They can go "yeah, you know, the US has been less than reliable as an ally recently, what with absurd tariffs, saber rattling around greenland, belitteling NATO, etc., and they seem unwilling to change, so we're just gonna pay the piper, and get oil, and make arrangements with the Chinese (aka. the worlds most powerful industry), and if they US doesn't like it, that sounds like a them-problem..."
What's very likely not gonna happen, is other countries fighting the US's war for them. NATO already told trump no, other countries won't give different answers.
And anyone who wants to actually invade Iran...well, let's put it this way: Iran is 3-4 times the size of Afghanistan, with even more difficult terrain, and has a standing army of 600,000 men, with over 300,000 in reserve. They have an air force, are proficient in the manufacture of drones, have a working intelligence network. And they've had 4 decades to dig into defensive positions.
In short, it's not gonna happen.
Don't think there is much of a point replying to this person seriously as he is obviously a troll. You can take half a minute to check his profile
People having worldviews you disagree with does not make them "trolls".
> which country started this whole mess?
what has already started, is already started -- I agree on Trump being dick, but does that make iran's "making new enemies" a wise move?
> NATO already told trump no, other countries won't give different answers.
of course it said no BEFORE IRAN started the $2M toll (and other countries don't like trump due to tariff-for-everyone)
if the current iran regime was strategically wise, iran should have fired everything it got to Israel, and make the missile interception rate down to 40%. That would have actually showed it's power.
now, with even UAE's missile interception rate of 96%, iran actually showed its missiles are nuisances, not some existential threat.
600,000 men and 300,000 in reserve -- well that would have mattered a lot in medieval wars... "they have an airforce" -- well do they actually have planes? "have a working intelligence network" -- hmm...
no you're way way way over-estimating iran
the only strategic move for iran was selecting one specific target (israel) and focusing all its might, not becoming a rambo
Their win condition isn't destroying Israel, its outlasting the American will for the war until a leadership change happens. They aren't the attackers in this war. They need to just defend until America and Israel give up because it is too costly at home.
> its outlasting the American will for the war until a leadership change happens
well even in the best-case scenario (trump impeachment), I highly doubt any democrat president can actually stop at status quo -- rather, the next president has exactly zero choice but to wipe out iran MORE than trump (and call trump a weakling)
just leave Iran be and get out? well he/she could, GIVEN that Iran didn't show its potential to be bully on the gulf states and didn't even think about that $2M toll...
now? well even if a pirate has a sad back story, doesn't mean the navy can leave them be.
by missiling everyone nearby, iran just became too dangerous to nearby neighbors...
by even talking about $2M toll, iran just became too financially dangerous even to strait users... I mean, even if it's "just $2M", what will stop iran from asking $5M, $10M, or even $100M ?
> iran's "making new enemies"
Those countries were already enemies of Iran by virtue of housing US bases, military installations, etc.
> what has already started, is already started -- I agree on Trump being dick, but does that make iran's "making new enemies" a wise move?
There is no downside on making the Gulf states enemies. Quite to the contrary: they might lobby the USA to end this madness. It's a serious damage to the importance of the USA in the region if it can't or doesn't want to open the strait again, either by force or by making a deal.
Delusional. The GCC has only 40,000 troops.
But they swear an oath to serve Richard Stallman unto death.
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woah so you read this as "iran is morally wrong"?
well, that's secondary thing right now
what's dumb is dumb
what's the least thing you should do when fighting a war? making more enemies.
even on moral side... if someone in walmart bullies you, and you bully back to your classmates, does that make you morally justified?
plus, if you showed your cards ("decades-old deterrence threats"), you're out of options
Iran is not flattening Emirati hospitals, like Israel would be doing in their shoes.
Iran is targeting direct US/Israeli interests, which includes military facilities, military personnel, and energy facilities with substantial US/Israeli partnerships. That latter part is particularly key here, and what pro-Israeli propaganda is anxious to suppress.
> plus, if you showed your cards ("decades-old deterrence threats"), you're out of options
Yes, it is a desperation move after undeterred US-Israeli terrorism and brazen violations of international law. But it's also working.
> The most important aspect of the "toll" is that Iran prefers payment in yuan, not dollars.
> If Iran succeeds in nationalizing the Straight and is successful in enforcing the toll, it represents a very serious threat to the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency for trading energy.
This theory seems to predict that CNY/USD should have gone up since Feb 27 as everyone rushes to trade and obtain yuan so they can pay the Iranians. But in fact the opposite is the case; that currency pair peaked Feb 27 after a bull run (well, only about +7%) since approximately "liberation day".
USD dominance isn't going anywhere, because all of the critical metrics are still basically uncontested by any alternative. China and Russia are losing allies left and right. They're demonstrating that they support terrorism. Nobody is going to decide that their currencies are the new hot thing.
China poses a huge threat, but some of their worst advantages aren't viable. We know things they have, so we tell them things we have. If you do X, we do Y. Thus some of their big advantages are nullified, unless they get reckless. Same as the nuclear issue, weapons you've invested in yet cannot even use, because they become part of new rules.
Some of that has been clarified in the trade tug of war, showing each other's dependencies. Some is being shown by also showing how easy it is for Russian infrastructure to be hit, or how easy it is to put a choke hold on critical energy, or to simply capture a dictator for that matter. It isn't even just those things, it's also the cadence and timeframe. Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and Russia all under severe pressure within just a few months at the start of 2026.
At most we've maybe seen some limited sabotage of infrastructure inside the US and perhaps aboard a carrier, some sharing of targeting information, etc.
If Russia and China are leveraging any of their real potential for pressure, it sure is hard to tell.
What about... Euro. Gold. Bitcoin. Currency baskets.
I mean, Gold is an asset. Bitcoin is an asset. Those aren't currencies, even if people like to think of them that way.
As far as the Euro, Europe is not America. The European Union is also not the United States. America has geographic advantages that Europe lacks. The US has structural stability advantages that the EU lacks. People sometimes argue things like, the EU is more of a framework or general agreement, while the US is an actual country.
The amount of USD in circulation dwarfs all other currencies and makes it more cushioned against shocks. It's much more liquid than gold or bitcoin. If you need to get actual things done in the real world and you need to get them done quickly, USD is the currency you want to generally have.
It's also the least likely to simply poof or disappear. China is the only real threat the US has faced since World War 2 and we're handling it pre-emptively. You could argue we were pre-empting the CCP even before World War 2, since we were supporting the anti-communist forces inside China before Japan attacked it and unified them against it.
The outcome of a lot of wars comes down to physics. The physics are on the side of the US. USD isn't going anywhere. Iranian and Venezuelan oil will be traded in USD now as well.
But it's still described as a $2M toll, not a 13.81M CNY toll. So I guess we're not there yet.
The list is longer than just the US and Israel, it includes all allies and nations supporting them, so, most of the gulf states.
But Iran let the International Maritime Org that anyone who is not US/Israel or not attacking or supporting attacks on them can pass through the strait of Hormuz. Is the $ 2M still a thing?
Iran letting ships through for too small price means that oil price will fall and their only leverage over USA goes away.
No one in the US asked for this. Such a dumb move from the current administration.
The traders with a five-minute preview of trump's tweets beg to differ
I've often wondered why the stock market oscillates while Trump is in office. If I just knew a little in advance...
Yeah who could have guessed electing a narcissistic moron surrounded by incompetent clowns would result in dumb moves?
Who could have possibly guessed that when voting for fascists, they'd start doing the same thing as all the other fascists.
You can’t say that. Trump is very inconsistent and a consummated liar, so plenty of people didn’t believe on his promises to deliver fascism. And plenty of people did believe on his promise to end wars. /s
Whether your little black heart wishes concentration camps or you’re just hoping your paycheck goes a bit further, voting for a con man is a terrible idea.
You write "/s" but that's unironically the logic a lot of these idiot enablers use.
"Oh he's just trolling", "it's a negotiation tactic, didn't you read his book?", "chill out, it's just a joke", "but what about OBAMA!?"
I mean it can't be worse than Biden right? RIGHT?
idk this move, along with firing missiles even to non-combatant countries, is going to fuk-up iran...
I mean, even before the $2M toll, if you're kuwait/UAE/saudi/etc, what choice do you have? form a coalition against iran
now.. with that $2M toll, iran just learnt it can just toll the ships...
so what choice do all those strait-using countries have? pay $2M or more, even after US leaves?
nope... they'll form a coalition against iran
it's highly unfortunate that trump started the war, but iran's way of things are just making more enemies -- it'll pay with regime change within few months
> now.. with that $2M toll, iran just learnt it can just toll the ships...
But the strait has two sides and Iran only controls one side. The UAE/Oman on the other side could equally threaten to attack Iranian ships unless Iran pays them a toll.
According to this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Strait_of_hormuz_full.jpg shipping lines are in Oman's territorial waters. Iran controls the whole area by creating a risk that a ship can be attacked. And if Oman would try to impose payments it would break the UN convention on the Law of the Sea.
well I guess that makes Iran really fked up...
the strait-using countries are surely going to "make a lesson out of" iran exactly for that reason
I think what we should have learned from this is that it's extremely hard to "make a lesson out of" Iran if you depend on moving oil past their borders... the gulf states are much more exposed to this than the US is, and much less powerful.
They are also not neutral - they have been paying in to the US protection racket, and are discovering that their payments haven't bought much.
> it's extremely hard to "make a lesson out of" Iran if you depend on moving oil past their borders
it's not just gulf states -- look at who are the customers of those gulf states are. the whole asia, europe, and america -- the whole world is their customer.
Even if it's "extremely hard", those countries have no choice but "make a lesson out of" iran -- just like what we did with pirates
why would those "customers of gulf" just leave iran? after US leaves, will iran regime suddenly become nice and stop forcing that $2M-per-voyage bill?
no, and even if iran regime promises "I'll never bill those ships", how could you trust on that promise? the only way to ensure free-ship-passing would be obliterating Iran as an example, even if US backs away.
> They are also not neutral - they have been paying in to the US protection racket
hmm so were they "helping" US bomb iran? "being neutral" means it didn't participate on attacking iran, not whether it paid or not.
If Canada and Mexico started letting Iran launch bombing sorties against US cities from within their borders, would the US consider them neutral?
2 Million a ship seems like a pretty cheap price to pay for the damage the us and Israel have inflicted on Iran - they cannot be made to pay it though, so I suppose the rest of us will have to (through marginally higher oil prices in the long term - much less than the spectacularly high oil prices the US war will cause in the short term)
> price to pay for the damage the us and Israel have inflicted on Iran
Well if we're talking reparations, shouldn't Iran pay for the damage Hezbollah inflicted on Israel with Iranian supplied weapons for decades?
Since 1985, Hezbollah has killed approximately 600 Israelis (if you count IDF soldiers during the occupation of Beirut). Israel has killed 5x that number of civilians in the last two weeks, if you count Lebanon as well as Iran. If you count soldiers...
It would be miniscule compared to the damage Israel inflicted on Lebanon for decades
The value of the oil / natural gas production in the Gulf states is not infinite. Nobody except the US has the force projection capacity to fight a major war against Iran. If they are not interested in fighting that war, the rest of the world will find that the cheapest and least disruptive option is to cut consumption. To assume that nobody is shipping oil and natural gas from the Gulf, until a new status quo emerges in the region.
> the cheapest and least disruptive option is to cut consumption
And good for the environment!
Most nations who are affected don't have a blue-water navy or similar means to pose a serious threat to Iran. They have to either back the USA or deal with the toll and the uncertainty that comes with it.
> they'll form a coalition against iran
and do what?
> and do what?
Bomb shit. The Saudi and UAE militaries aren't anything to sneeze at. (The area cross the Strait from the UAE is majority Arab [1].)
I think it's generally good strategy to not provoke new belligerents against oneself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran
The Saudi and UAE militaries are indeed something to sneeze at. Go read the comments about them from anyone in the US military whose worked with them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/19ckc6l/saudi_a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/qhmbog/why_i...
https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/hqfatn/why_are_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/fbd97k/is_...
well you don't expect them to fight bravely -- well, I don't even expect Saudis to even send their own citizens to iran
rather, you expect them to pay for the missiles and mercenaries like gurkhans
gurkhans are few and already employed, and there is no much substitution.
Saudi and UAE has less air power than US+Israel, whatever could be bombed already bombed.
But Saudi and UAE are ruled by rich regimes who benefit from oil revenue, and very vulnarable to Iran strikes, they more likely will pay those $2m.
> Saudi and UAE has less air power than US+Israel
Less plus some is still more.
> whatever could be bombed already bombed
This is plainly untrue. We're still bombing things. Missiles are still being fired. Power plants and refineries continue to run.
> Saudi and UAE are ruled by rich regimes who benefit from oil revenue, and very vulnarable to Iran strikes, they more likely will pay those $2m
That functionally cedes Emirati and Saudi sovereignty to Iran. Today it's $2mm. Tomorrow it's anything else Tehran requires.
> That functionally cedes Emirati and Saudi sovereignty to Iran. Today it's $2mm. Tomorrow it's anything else Tehran requires.
the point is besides full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do, there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra, they just don't have way to deal with the problem.
> full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do
Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where the U.S. cannot.
> there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra
Barring invasion: mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines. Israel locking up the Caspian and the UAE and Saudi Arabia locking up Hormuz to Iran changes the calculus of the war in Tehran and makes suing for peace–not with America and Israel, but with the Gulf–tenable.
>Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts.
As the article points out, this just makes the soldiers on the coast the targets of the drones and missiles.
And it is a very large coastline to secure. How many mercenaries can they feed into the grinder? They certainly can't keep it up like Russia.
There was a semi-stable equilibrium and the US ruined it. Now Iran controls the straight and it will be very very costly to go back.
> this just makes the soldiers on the coast the targets of the drones and missiles
Correct. That also reveals the locations of launchers, artillery pieces, et cetera. A winnable game if you have cheap bodies.
> it is a very large coastline to secure
To secure the Strait? Absolutely. To converge firepower onto a few beachheads? Not necessarily. And a Gulf land grab wouldn't be comprehensive. Just the islands (e.g. Larak, Hengam and East Qeshm) and maybe the land directly across from the Musandam Peninsula. (Probably not to hold. Just draw fire and trade back to Tehran. Hell, gift it to Trump.)
Kuwait and Iraq remain screwed. But if you're a Gulf exporter, that isn't necessarily a bad thing...
> There was a semi-stable equilibrium and the US ruined it. Now Iran controls the straight and it will be very very costly to go back
Sure. The point is how those costs will be borne. I don't think the emerging status quo is tenable for the Gulf.
Without the US, Saudi Arabia et al would be significantly outnumbered in a war with Iran. It's very unlikely that they have the capacity to invade Iran, even without considering drones. Factoring in drones, they will simply run out of soldiers before Iran runs out of drones, and the Iranian army can conduct mop-up operations at their leisure.
> Without the US, Saudi Arabia et al would be significantly outnumbered
True. Without the U.S., the most they can do is pot Iranian ships so they sue for limited peace.
> Factoring in drones, they will simply run out of soldiers before Iran runs out of drones
Both the KSA and UAE have access to mercenaries. They wouldn't be running out of fodder any time soon.
> Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where the U.S. cannot.
they couldn't win this against much closer, smaller and weaker Yemen. They just don't have functional military.
> mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines.
I don't believe they will do this because they love oil money too much, unlike Iranian regime, which is idiologically/religiously driven, and endured for many years of various attacks and sanctions.
> couldn't win this against much closer, smaller and weaker Yemen. They just don't have functional military
KSA went it alone in Yemen. And from that–as well as various proxy wars in Africa–both it and the UAE have learned.
> don't believe they will do this because they love oil money too much
Loving oil money means wanting to export your oil. That said, I think the monarchies are more politically vulnerable. So it's harder for them to commit to this path. (It would also involve pissing off Trump.) But that doesn't mean it's strategically off the table, particularly for Saudi Arabia, which is less dependent on the Strait than the UAE.
> KSA went it alone in Yemen.
there were many countries involved in coalition. UAE specifically sent troups to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aden_(2018)
But the issue is that KSA just didn't perform on the ground, well equipped troups were overrun by Houthies with AK consistently. Not clear if they changed anything.
> Loving oil money means wanting to export your oil.
right, if Iran will take reasonable cuts, gulf states won't escalate.
> if Iran will take reasonable cuts, gulf states won't escalate
Unlikely. Again, a reasonable cut today can turn into any ask tomorrow. It's worth tremendous costs to the Gulf to ensure the Strait returns to at least neutrality.
If there is a good time for unreasonable ask its today, Iran has strong incentive to say: you withdraw US troupes/bases or no tankers through the strait. If they don't do it today, they won't do it in next few decades.
Also, I don't think controlling shoreline will give anything: tankers are easily strikeable via drones/missiles from inner-Iran.
The only solution: is deep invasion supported with internal uprising with full defeat of current regime.
well I don't actually think Saudi & UAE will send their own countrymen...
rather, they'd just use oil money and pay gurkha mercenaries
this didn't work for them in Yemen. And Iran is farther and stronger.