Iran is moving to charge the world for passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The last time the United States faced something similar, Founding Father and America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, went to war to stop it.
In 1801, Jefferson refused to pay tribute to the Barbary States — regimes that taxed maritime passage through coercion, piracy, and hostage-taking. Rather than accept extortion as the cost of commerce, the United States chose confrontation. That decision helped establish a principle that has underwritten global trade ever since: The seas are not for sale.
That principle is now being tested again — this time by Iran.
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Roughly 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Each day, nearly 20 million barrels pass through this narrow waterway, connecting Gulf producers — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq — to global markets. There is no viable alternative at scale. Control over the strait is not just regional leverage. It is systemic power.
Tehran is not hiding its geopolitical aspirations. Following the collapse of recent talks between Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran has signaled not compromise, but escalation. Its demands — U.S. military withdrawal, sanctions relief, and the preservation of its ballistic missile program — are conditions designed to shift the balance of power in its favor.
But the most consequential move is quieter and more telling. Iran is advancing a tolling system for vessels transiting the strait, demanding payments in cryptocurrency to bypass Western financial oversight. At a reported fee of $2 million per tanker, such a regime could generate hundreds of millions of dollars each month — possibly exceeding $800 million if liquefied natural gas shipments are included.
This is not just revenue. It is a strategic lifeline that allows the regime to fund its nuclear ambitions and the security apparatus used to suppress domestic dissent. By creating an “off-the-books” digital treasury, Tehran is making itself financially immune to the internal pressure and international sanctions meant to force a pivot away from aggression.
Once that kind of system takes hold, it rarely stays contained. When access to a strategic waterway becomes conditional — subject to digital tribute or political alignment — the foundation of maritime order starts to weaken. What begins as a fee becomes a dangerous global precedent.
That precedent will not stay in the Gulf. China, which purchases most of Iran’s oil exports, has a clear interest in normalizing this model. A toll regime in Hormuz provides a blueprint for Beijing to assert control over the South China Sea and the approaches to Taiwan. Russia, too, benefits from a system in which access is shaped by power rather than the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
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Iran’s actions are not isolated. They are part of a broader alignment with Russia and China that is testing how far the rules of the international system can be pushed. The issue is no longer just Iran. It is whether the system that has governed global trade for decades can hold under pressure.
The U.S. once refused to pay for access to the sea. It should be clear now what happens if it starts.
Bradley Martin is the executive director of the Near East Center for Strategic Studies. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter @ByBradleyMartin. Dr. Liram Koblentz-Stenzler, senior researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University, Herzliya, and a visiting scholar at Brandeis University. Follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter @koblentz_liram.