Trump Restarts Naval Blockade Of Iran, Bills The Rest Of The World 20 Percent For The Safety Of Sailing Past It

WASHINGTON. Moving to secure one of the world's most important shipping lanes from the instability that had settled over it in the days after he ordered it blockaded, President Trump this week reimposed a U.S. naval blockade of Iran's ports and briefly announced that every cargo ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz would be charged a 20 percent fee for the privilege of doing so safely.

The President described the levy as "reimbursement, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World." As proposed, the fee would have applied to all vessels transiting the strait, a waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil moves and which had operated without incident for years before the current administration turned its attention to it.

U.S. Central Command confirmed that American forces "resumed the naval blockade against vessels transiting to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas" at 4 p.m. Eastern, adding that all countries other than Iran would enjoy "fair and open use of the Strait." Officials clarified that the fair and open use of the strait was itself the service being offered, and that its openness would be maintained for as long as the appropriate parties recognized the value of maintaining it.

Within a day the President reversed himself on the toll, saying he would "replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States." The revised arrangement preserved the essential logic of the original, in which the safe passage of ships would be exchanged for payment, while relocating the payment from the world's shipping manifests to a set of investment commitments from the same Gulf governments whose royal families and sovereign funds have signed a series of deals with the Trump Organization, backed his family's crypto venture, and provided the presidential aircraft now slated to become his post-office property.

Administration officials characterized the sequence as a routine matter of national security, noting that a president who blockades a waterway, strikes the country beside it, and then offers to sell the resulting calm back to everyone who uses it is merely applying the tools available to the office. Neither the strikes nor the blockade had made the strait measurably safer at press time, though officials expressed confidence that they eventually would, at which point the safety would be available for the appropriate consideration.

At press time, the President had reassured the world that the Strait of Hormuz remained fully open to every nation, all of which were free to use it precisely as they had before he arrived, minus the part where it was free.