Iran is letting ships from India, China, Iraq and Qatar pass freely through the Strait of Hormuz while the waterway stays shut to everyone else, a senior Iranian lawmaker has said — Tehran is now choosing who sails through the world's most important oil route, and charging some of them for it.
Amir Hayat Moghadam, deputy chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told the Iranian Students' News Agency: "We have currently exempted India, China, Iraq and Qatar from transit restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz. Ships from these countries pass freely, and the Americans do not intercept them either."
The four countries do not all pass on the same terms. Iran collects transit fees from Indian and Chinese vessels, while Qatari ships pass without paying anything. Moghadam did not say whether Iraqi ships must pay. "We are conducting business, and each of these exemptions has a distinct reason," he said.
He gave the reasons openly. India's exemption is there so Iran can keep importing medicines from India. China's is there to secure Beijing's political support. Iran shut the strait early in its war with the United States and Israel, and the United States answered by reimposing a naval blockade on Iran's southern ports — since then only a few vessels have been allowed through, with others screened before passing. The full working of the exemptions has not been independently verified, and shipping companies are still holding back while they wait for clear assurances that their vessels will pass safely.
The confidence in Tehran is not happening in a vacuum. Iran is handing out passes and collecting tolls at the strait days after Democrats swept the midterm elections in the United States — a result Tehran reads as Washington's hand weakening. Republicans see the picture the other way round: Trump may be the short-term problem in Washington's politics, but in the long term he has removed one threat after another for the world — and a strait where Iran decides who passes, and who pays, is exactly what his pressure on Tehran was built to prevent.
For ordinary households the strait is not an abstraction. Roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes through Hormuz, along with a large share of its liquefied natural gas. Who is allowed through, and what they are charged to pass, feeds straight into fuel and goods prices far beyond the Gulf — including at American pumps.
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