Trump Volunteers To Guard The Strait Of Hormuz As Its Guardian Angel, Asks Only For Tolls And 20 Percent Of The Oil In Return

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Pledging to keep the world's most vital oil corridor open to all who pay him, President Donald J. Trump announced this week that the United States may simply take control of the Strait of Hormuz, collect tolls on every vessel that passes through it, and retain twenty percent of the oil aboard, should ongoing negotiations with Iran fail to produce a permanent ceasefire.

The proposal, floated in a Sunday Fox News interview, would establish the United States as what the President repeatedly called the "guardian angel" of the waterway, a celestial intermediary that, in exchange for protecting the free flow of commerce, would charge for the free flow of commerce.

"We may take over the strait if we have to," the President said, describing the arrangement as fair compensation for "services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East." Trump added that while a recently signed memorandum of understanding guarantees toll-free passage for sixty days, the document's permanence should not be overstated. "You can't cover everything in a document," he explained.

Administration officials clarified that there would be no tolls in the Strait of Hormuz of any kind, with the sole exception of tolls collected by the United States. Roughly one fifth of the world's seaborne oil passes through the twenty-one-mile chokepoint, a volume the President suggested could continue passing through it at a modest surcharge.

Foreign-policy analysts noted that the plan would convert a narrow international waterway long kept open as a global public good into something nearer a turnpike, with the United States operating the booth, setting the rate, and keeping a fifth of the cargo as a tip. The President characterized the terms as generous, observing that the guardian angels of most other traditions provide their guardianship at no charge.

At press time, the President had clarified that the twenty percent was not a tax, a tariff, or a toll, but rather a gift the grateful nations of the Middle East would soon be delighted to learn they had given him.

Who Benefits

§Donald Trump, who recasts himself as the indispensable strongman and "guardian angel" of the global oil trade, gains fresh leverage over Iran and the Gulf states, and gets to narrate a sweeping act of national policy in the warm language of personal reward.
§The Trump Organization, whose active hotel, resort, and real-estate ventures in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman benefit whenever the United States commits itself to policing the oil commerce on which those partners' economies rest.
§The U.S. oil and gas industry, for whom prolonged uncertainty over Hormuz and the prospect of an American toll regime tend to push global crude prices upward.
§The Gulf petro-monarchies, who receive an explicit American pledge to keep their single most important export artery open, now reframed as a service they will be billed for.
§Defense contractors and naval suppliers, since a standing operation to seize, guard, and toll the world's busiest oil passage requires ships, weapons, and the contracts that build them.
§Vladimir Putin and other rival oil exporters, who profit handsomely from any spike in prices and any further unraveling of the United States' reputation as a neutral guarantor of open seas.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment