The U.S. and Iran are reportedly in the process of working out a deal to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
President Donald Trump assured people he wasn’t going to make the mistakes of the Obama Iran deal, and has placed focus on getting the highly enriched uranium to deter the nuclear threat. In fact, he was even pursuing a broader peace across the region, asking other countries like Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Abraham Accords once the Iran deal is finalized.
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This also may have pushed Iran to try to clean up its language when it comes to its idea of charging tolls for transiting the Strait of Hormuz. So the regime just came up with a slick move that sounds like a move Democrats would make.
Vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz will need to pay fees for “navigational services,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday.
Such payments for transiting the waterway were not tolls, he said at a press briefing.
“The services that are provided, navigational services, in addition to the measures necessary to protect the environment of the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, and the Sea of Oman, require the collection of certain fees,” Baghaei said, adding that Tehran was “not seeking to collect tolls.”
Oh, so they’ll scream “environmental fees” like Democrats to get money, leaving out that the only environmental problem is the Iranian regime stopping and attacking ships. Oh, and maybe the regime is possibly releasing oil into the Persian Gulf because they’ve run out of storage capacity.
READ MORE: Iran Seizes a Tanker and Suffers New Problem – What’s Hilarious Is Who That Cargo Belongs To
They’re desperate for money with how much they’ve been crushed, and they want to establish, officially, that they have control over the Strait.
The New York Times is reporting they’re in talks with Oman about it. The Strait involves the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
Bottom line, though, it doesn’t matter what you call it; it’s still basically trying to hold people up.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), all ships have the right to unfettered passage, and states cannot charge for it or impede it, even if it is in their territorial waters. While Iran is not a signatory to UNCLOS, Oman is, and Iran still can’t do it even if they haven’t signed it. Oman has already said they would not charge tolls because they’d agreed to UNCLOS, so it remains to be seen if that report from the NY Times is correct. The allure of the money might attract Oman, but it would not make their neighbors happy with them.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and many other nations have spoken out previously against any efforts to charge. And they can’t have Iran have control over it, as this episode with their bad behavior has demonstrated. But it’s so typical of Iran when they realized they had to walk back tolls, to try to repackage it into something more legally palatable.
But that’s not going to fly either.
Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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