One of Iran’s biggest achievements, apart from the fact that the regime of the Islamic Republic still stands, has been its newfound ability to place a stranglehold on shipping passing through one of the world’s most important waterways.<\/p>\n
Iran’s apparent willingness to re-open the Strait now suggests that some of the pressures that have mounted on the global economy over the past month may start to ease.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Araghchi says safe passage will be possible for the next two weeks, in co-ordination with Iran’s armed forces and with what he calls “due consideration of technical limitations”.<\/p>\n
Since the current war started, Iran has indicated it wants to impose new rules for traffic moving through the Strait.<\/p>\n
Some media reports have suggested that Tehran’s plan includes the right to demand transit fees to the tune of $2m (\u00a31.5m) per ship, with the proceeds shared between Iran and Oman – the two countries which border the Strait of Hormuz).<\/p>\n
For the Gulf states that ship their precious hydrocarbons through the Strait, this is a non-starter.<\/p>\n
“This is totally unacceptable,” Anwar Gargash told the BBC, calling it a dangerous precedent for other vital chokepoints around the world.<\/p>\n
“I think this is going to be extremely dangerous. And I don’t think at the end of the day it will fly.”<\/p>\n
Donald Trump does not appear to have ruled out the idea that Tehran could charge tolls, even apparently suggesting to ABC News that the US and Iran could run the Strait as a joint venture.<\/p>\n
Administration officials insist that since the US depends very little on oil from the Gulf, other countries should take the lead in resolving the Hormuz issue.<\/p>\n
Last week, the UK chaired talks involving more than 40 countries on how to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, with all participants agreeing that the war had to end first.<\/p>\n
With a two-week window of opportunity now open, those discussions may gain momentum.<\/p>\n
“We will continue to work with the shipping, insurance and energy sectors,” UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a statement welcoming the ceasefire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Iran’s biggest achievements, apart from the fact that the regime of the Islamic Republic still stands,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-520425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}