Apr 08, 2026 12:15 pm IST

Opinion | Ceasefire Aside, Iran Won't Give Up On A Hormuz 'Toll'

Since February 28, when the United States and Israel struck Iran, the IRGC has been constructing its 'tollbooth' with methodical precision. This is what may happen to it now...

Aditya Sinha Aditya Sinha Analyst

In 1429, King Eric of Pomerania began charging ships to pass through the Øresund, the narrow strait between what is today Denmark and Sweden. Every vessel bound for the Baltic, regardless of whether it was calling at a Danish port, had to stop at the castle of Helsingør and pay. Those who refused were persuaded by cannons on both shores. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Sound Dues - the toll on the use of the Øresund - constituted up to two-thirds of the Danish crown's total revenue. In 1567, the toll was restructured into a 1-2% tax on declared cargo value, which tripled receipts. It ran, with minor interruptions, for 428 years. It took thirteen nations - Britain, France, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, and others - and a payment of 33.5 million rix-dollars, roughly twelve years of toll income, to abolish it under the Copenhagen Convention of 1857. History does not record whether King Eric's successors considered this a satisfactory outcome.

The Strait of Hormuz, in the spring of 2026, is improving on this history.

The Iranian Tollbooth

Since February 28, when the United States and Israel struck Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been constructing its tollbooth with methodical precision. Ships wishing to transit must approach an IRGC-linked intermediary and submit documentation: the vessel's International Maritime Organization number, crew list, cargo manifest, destination, and automated identification system data. The IRGC screens the file. Nations are ranked one to five based on perceived friendliness; India, Pakistan, China, and Iraq are, for now, on the right side of that ledger. If the vessel passes, a clearance code and routing instructions follow. As it approaches the narrow channel north of Larak Island, off Bandar Abbas, it broadcasts its code over VHF radio and is met by an IRGC patrol boat, which escorts it through what Lloyd's List Intelligence has taken to calling Tehran's tollbooth. The charge for an oil tanker starts at approximately one dollar per barrel of cargo. For a Very Large Crude Carrier loaded with two million barrels, that is USD 2 million per transit, payable in Chinese yuan or stablecoins. Iran's Parliament passed a bill recently to formalise the arrangement, with tolls denominated in rials.

One should also look at the traffic data. Before the war, roughly 135 commercial vessels transited the Strait of........

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