“We’re going to hit them very hard tonight, and we’re going to hit them hard tomorrow.” President Donald Trump said that in a radio interview on July 13, and by the end of the day he had ended a peace process that was less than a month old.
Trump announced that the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz is back, effective July 14 at 4 p.m. New York time. He also said the United States would charge a fee of 20 percent on the value of all cargo passing through the waterway. US Central Command said on X that as of 4:45 p.m. New York time on July 13, the military had begun “a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran.”
The announcement
Trump set out the toll in a Truth Social post. “The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’” he wrote, adding that the country would be reimbursed “at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped” for the cost of providing security. Every country except Iran would have “fair and open use of the Strait.”
He had floated the idea earlier that morning on Fox News. “We guarded it for nothing, and now we’re going to guard it, we’re going to get paid for guarding it. A lot of money,” he said.
The White House gave no detail on how the toll would be collected, whether Gulf allies had been told, or what legal instrument would back it.
Rubio’s earlier position
The toll runs against what the administration said six weeks earlier. When Iran proposed tolls on ships in the strait in June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the idea illegal. “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees,” he said. “That’s existing international law.”
The International Maritime Organisation said at the time that no country has the legal power to impose charges on vessels moving through international straits. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Hormuz is an international strait where ships have the right of transit passage.
The money involved is large. A fully loaded Very Large Crude Carrier would face a charge of approximately $32 million for one voyage at current oil prices. The Iranian tolls the United States had called illegal extortion were described as reaching $2 million per vessel, sixteen times lower. A shipping consultant quoted by CNBC called the announcement “really just bluster,” arguing that if the United States could safely escort ships, “we would have seen that happen in the past few weeks.” More than ten people in shipping markets said they were blindsided and had heard nothing from Washington or its Gulf allies.
What collapsed
The Versailles agreement, signed on June 18, had set a 60-day window for technical talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, Hormuz and frozen Iranian assets. The United States had lifted its blockade and issued sanctions waivers for Iranian crude exports. Iran had committed to diluting its enriched uranium stockpile under IAEA supervision. The first round of talks at Bürgenstock in Switzerland, on June 21 and 22, produced only a preliminary roadmap.
Trump’s letter to Congress under the War Powers Resolution, dated July 10, said new military action against Iran had begun on July 7. Oil prices jumped and stock markets fell on the July 13 news. Iran’s government said the agreement had “undoubtedly entered a crisis phase” and that it would not abide by its terms while the United States violated its commitments.
In the same 24 hours the UAE’s Defence Ministry said Iranian cruise missiles struck two of its tankers, the Mombasa and Al Bahiyah. One Indian national was killed and eight people were wounded.
Congress and India
Congress approved a measure last month directing an end to US hostilities in Iran. It was described as largely symbolic because Trump was expected to veto it. Democrats now say the war is illegal and that a fresh notification cannot restart the 60-day clock. No court has settled that question.
India is the world’s third-largest oil importer and depends heavily on Gulf crude moving through Hormuz. Its energy import costs rose substantially when the strait was effectively closed between February and mid-June 2026. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs had not commented on the death of its national. Qatar and Pakistan, the mediators of the Bürgenstock talks, had also said nothing publicly.
