Jun 16, 2026
Just one day after President Donald Trump declared the Strait of Hormuz would reopen “permanently toll-free,” Iran said ships could still face fees for services provided in the crucial shipping lane.
On Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said that Iran was “not seeking to levy transit tolls; however, fees will be charged in exchange for the services that are provided.”
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The International Maritime Organization has warned that charging tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz would set a “dangerous precedent” because states bordering such straits are not permitted to hamper or suspend that right.
“Hormuz is a natural waterway and as best I can tell the only service Iran would be charging for is not attacking shipping,” James R. Holmes, chair of maritime strategy at the Naval War College, told the New York Times.
The comments came one day after the U.S. and Iran announced they’d reached a 60-day interim peace deal set to be signed on Friday. The details of the deal are still unknown, but Trump said the strait would reopen on Friday and that Iran’s restrictions on shipping in the strait and the U.S. naval blockade on Iran would simultaneously be lifted.
Traffic through the strait has been sharply curtailed since the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. The issues with the strait have severely disrupted global oil markets, driving up oil prices and increasing costs for consumers.
If Iran were to move forward with fees for services in the strait, it could add further expenses and complications for shipping through the waterway.
Paying fees could also present complications for U.S. companies, given Washington’s designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and the group’s role in Iran’s maritime security operations around the strait.
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The idea of ships paying for passage through the strait emerged after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February and Tehran responded by disrupting commercial shipping in the region. Iran has since established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which it says manages vessel traffic and issues “safe passage permits.”
It’s still unclear what possible fees could look like.
The future of the strait
The deal to reopen the strait is expected to bring much needed relief to global energy markets, but how quickly that relief comes remains to be seen.
Typically, 20 million barrels of oil pass through the strait everyday and while some ships have managed to make it through, millions of barrels’ worth of expected exports have been delayed, rerouted or stranded since the conflict began. And getting shipments flowing again like normal wouldn’t happen overnight.
“You’re talking about six to 12 months to be able to find some sort of equilibrium,” Wael Sawan, chief executive of the London-based oil giant Shell, said in an interview with The New York Times last month. “This assumes everything comes back onstream quickly, which is challenging because some of the infrastructure has been damaged.”
The disruption also highlighted Iran’s ability to exert control over one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. “We have now handed Iran de facto control over the strait – a weapon more powerful than any nuke,” one of the sources told CNN.
Whether shipping returns to normal will depend largely on how much confidence tanker operators, insurers and energy companies have that the 60-day agreement will hold. Seeing evidence that the ceasefire can endure may be the factor that determines whether businesses are willing to resume operations like before.
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Rinna Diamantakos is an assigning editor at Moneywise.com. A versatile journalist, she has experience as a writer, editor and producer. Her work has focused on politics, business and financial news.
