The Strait of Hormuz Now Has Two Guardians

On July 12, Donald Trump declared the United States the "Guardian of the Hormuz Strait" and imposed a 20 percent transit fee on the world's most important oil chokepoint ^[1]. Within hours, Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi fired back.

20% is of course too much. We will be fair. — Abbas Araghci

Both sides now claim the same title. Both want to monetize the same waterway. The only dispute Araghchi raised was the price. For the three months before that declaration, the Trump administration had argued categorically that tolls on an international waterway violate international law — not as a negotiating posture but as a principle. On April 1, Trump told Gulf allies they would have to secure their own oil, signaling that American protection of the strait was no longer free ^[2]. On May 7, the US sanctioned Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Authority and declared its tolling system "a non-negotiable barrier to a peace deal" ^[3]. On May 22, Trump was explicit.

We don’t want tolls. It is international. It is an international waterway. — Donald Trump

Secretary of State Marco Rubio went further, collapsing any distinction between fees and tolls.

Fees and tolls are the same thing to me. There isn’t a nation on Earth that supports having to pay money to go through the Strait. — Marco Rubio

Vice President JD Vance was equally categorical.

In fact, I feel quite confident that we’re not gonna have a tolled Strait of Hormuz in the future — JD Vance

The principle held through late June. Washington's position was that any monetization of Hormuz was illegitimate. Then, on June 20, Trump threatened to impose American tolls on the same strait.

If they don't make a deal, we'll collect tolls. — Donald Trump

Vance framed the logic plainly.

The United States wins either way. — JD Vance

The US threat came first. Iran did not re-impose its own tolls until late June, making the American proposal not a reaction to Iranian fees but a pre-planned leverage play ^[4]. Even as Trump was threatening his own tolls, the administration was still rejecting Oman's separate proposal for voluntary fees to fund navigational safety and environmental protection in the strait ^[5]. The principle had been instrumental: what was at stake was not whether the strait should be monetized, but who would collect. On July 12, Trump answered that question. He imposed the 20 percent fee and declared the US the strait's "Guardian" — the exact sovereignty claim Iran had made and Washington had spent months rejecting ^[1]. The international response arrived on the same legal grounds Trump had once invoked against Iran. The International Maritime Organization ruled there was no legal basis for mandatory transit tolls.

There is no legal basis through which to introduce mandatory tolls simply to transit through a strait — International Maritime Organization

Brazil's president Lula called it "piracy." The IMO resolution demanded unhindered and toll-free transit through Hormuz, placing Washington's proposed toll in the same category as Tehran's closures ^[6]. The fee lasted two days. On July 14, after appeals from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar, Trump replaced the 20 percent transit charge with trade and investment deals ^[7]. Iran's per-ship toll model had been redirected into bilateral capital commitments from the Gulf states to the US economy. Trump framed the extraction as reciprocity.

Those investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future. — Donald Trump

The Gulf states that once demanded American protection now pay for it. In April, they had sought security guarantees and compensation from Iran ^[8]. By mid-July, they were routing investment commitments to Washington as the price of keeping the strait open. Saudi Arabia, already scaling back its Vision 2030 program under the blockade's economic pressure ^[9], had little choice. Trump had established the template weeks earlier, threatening to withhold missile defenses from Riyadh after the kingdom blocked US military access to its airspace — comply or lose protection ^[10]. The swap did not end the blockade. Trump's reimposed naval cordon, announced July 16, targets only ships traveling to or from Iranian ports ^[11]. The fee-to-investment pivot narrowed the economic war from all Hormuz traffic to Iran-specific trade, relieving Gulf shipping while maintaining military pressure on Tehran. Simultaneously, the US and Gulf states are accelerating pipeline construction to bypass Hormuz entirely — Goldman Sachs estimates 60 percent of Gulf oil could be "strait-proof" by 2028 ^[12]. China and Russia are studying the precedent for their own choke points ^[13].