ON Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched a massive attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran, citing three essential reasons for doing so. First, the threat posed by Iran’s purported development of a nuclear weapon, or at least the critical components for one; second, Iran’s continued support for organizations deemed to be terrorist groups, namely Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and the Houthi rebels of Yemen; and third, Iran’s continual threats, sometimes actually carried out, to block or restrict passage through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, through which more than a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
Of those three reasons, it was the third that was the most clear-cut and supported by international law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), which in three separate articles guarantees free passage through waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz. Whether other countries were supportive of the US-Israeli war objectives or not, and most were not, the near-universal sentiment was that unrestricted access to the Strait of Hormuz must be restored, and that the various Iranian efforts to prevent that must end as quickly as possible, preferably through peaceful means.
Now comes the volatile and erratic US president, who, in a post to his Truth Social network on Monday night, declared that the US would reimpose a blockade of Iranian ports, and would otherwise now be the “guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz, with ships of all other nations save Iran or those bound to or from Iranian ports at liberty to pass the strait as needed. However, President Donald Trump added an alarming condition to this: Out of “fairness” for the US effort to maintain the strait, he said, all ships passing through it would be levied a toll equal to 20 percent of the value of the cargo they carry, payable to the US government. Trump did not specify what would happen if any ship refused to pay the toll, but the implication was that it would be prevented from passage, by whatever means necessary.
For comparison, the proposal of the Iranian government for controlling the Strait of Hormuz was to require ships to travel managed sea lanes near the Iranian coast, and to pay a toll of up to $3 million per transit. Trump’s edict would raise that cost by an order of magnitude; for example, a tanker carrying two million barrels of oil, an average-sized ship in the Persian Gulf, at a value of about $70 per barrel, would be forced to pay $28 million to pass the strait.
There is a word for this kind of behavior on the high seas, and that word is “piracy.”
Article 26 of the Unclos, which governs territorial seas, states that no charge may be levied upon foreign ships by reason only of their passage. Article 38 guarantees the right of transit passage through straits used for international navigation. That right is absolute: it cannot be suspended, and it cannot be conditioned on payment to the coastal state, and certainly not to a third power halfway around the globe that has appointed itself gatekeeper. Article 42 permits bordering states to regulate certain matters of navigation within their territorial waters, but expressly forbids any regulation that has the practical effect of denying, hampering, or impairing transit.
The governments around the world that rightly condemned Iran’s attempt to use the Strait of Hormuz as geopolitical leverage have been silent on the suggestion by the US president that his government would do the same, and this is unconscionable. The economic implications for the rest of the world of such a plan are horrifying to contemplate, as well as the extreme risk of an even wider conflict. After all, piracy activity is one of the few cases in international law in which countries are given a free pass to respond with lethal force. What might happen, for example, if the US Navy, following Trump’s orders, would try to intercept a tanker bound for China? China might very well respond aggressively, and under the common framework of international law and convention, it would be justified in doing so.
Of course, there is a common belief that Trump has neither the wherewithal nor the practical resources to follow through with his plan, and we can certainly hope that is the case. However, his even suggesting it is alarming, and must be formally condemned.