Vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz will need to pay fees for “navigational services,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday.
Such payments for transiting the waterway were not tolls, he said at a press briefing.
“The services that are provided, navigational services, in addition to the measures necessary to protect the environment of the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, and the Sea of Oman, require the collection of certain fees,” Baghaei said, adding that Tehran was “not seeking to collect tolls.”
The new measures were needed to balance Iran’s security concerns with those of the international community, he said, according to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.
Even though the Iranian regime has repackaged the charges as fees rather than tolls, it remains in violation of international law, security analyst Roger Macmillan told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
“Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Strait of Hormuz carries the right of transit passage,” he said. “All ships enjoy continuous, expeditious, and unimpeded transit. Coastal states cannot charge for it, suspend it, or impede it, even where the waterway falls entirely within their territorial waters.
“Whatever word appears on the invoice, the substance is the same. Iran is seeking to monetize and control passage through an international waterway it has no legal right to manage in this way.”
UNCLOS bars Iran from charging fees over Strait of Hormuz
Under Articles 38 and 44 of UNCLOS, bordering Iran and Oman cannot suspend, impede, or charge tolls for vessels passing through the Strait, even though Iran is not a signatory to the convention, Macmillan said. The convention also permits countries to charge fees for services provided, he said.
The “smoke and mirrors” attempt at hiding the toll was the same attitude the regime had been employing in negotiations with Washington all weekend, Macmillan said.
According to military historian and intelligence expert Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, “There’s this idea that the Iranian government is a bunch of maniacs, but clearly there’s a maritime lawyer who has spoken up and said that if they charge tolls on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, they might face years of arbitration and litigation in maritime courts. If it’s a fee, like a pilotage fee, for getting safely past the obstacles in the Strait, then perhaps the arbitration and litigation will be quick and straightforward.”
The “obstacles” just so happened to be Iran’s “anti-ship missiles and drones pointed at the Strait of Hormuz,” she said.
While Iran was likely trying to use the waterway to recover from the economic damage of the war, particularly the US blockade, it was also being used to send a message about the regime’s permanence, Nusbacher said.
“The Iranians will already be talking about relaxing their demands for reparations if they can bill shipowners, or cutting the ‘fee’ for going through the Strait if they get a few billion more from the Americans,” she said, citing the ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington.
Iran and Oman were holding talks about charging transit fees despite international opposition, The New York Times reported last Thursday.
Iran could achieve billions in revenue with Strait of Hormuz toll
Iran could make $700 billion in annual revenue if allowed to charge a toll in the Strait of Hormuz, JP Morgan wrote in its 16th annual “Eye on the Market Energy Paper: Fighting Words” report last month.
Tehran has increasingly attempted to claim regulatory control over the territory. Last week, it published a map asserting its claim over waterways that extended into the territorial waters of both the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
In a post on X/Twitter, Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority defined its claimed management zone as running from Kuh-e Mobarak in Iran to the south of Fujairah in the UAE at the Strait’s eastern entrance, and from the end of Qeshm Island in Iran to Umm al-Quwain in the UAE at its western entrance.