For half a century, presidents of both parties treated the Strait of Hormuz as an American obligation to be met and never invoiced. Last Monday, President Donald Trump broke the pattern: the United States, he announced, will be “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT” and will be reimbursed for the job. “We guarded it for nothing,” he told Fox News, “and now we’re going to guard it, we’re going to get paid for guarding it.”
Commentators rushed to pick apart the mechanics of a transit fee. They are missing the doctrine underneath it, which is overdue and correct: the era of securing other people’s oil at American expense is over.
Consider what this campaign cost. The Center for Strategic and International Studies prices Operation Epic Fury at roughly $40 billion in direct costs. Naval launchers emptied 850 Tomahawks into Iran, a record for any campaign in history, at $3.6 million per missile. A war-driven supplemental of $87.6 billion now sits in front of Congress. Every dollar of it is American.
Now consider who the strait actually serves. Before the war, it carried about a fifth of the world’s oil, and Asia received nearly 90% of its crude. The biggest customer by far is China: 5.35 million barrels a day flowed through the strait to Chinese ports, some 38% of the total, and Beijing separately purchases over 90% of everything Iran itself exports. America, by contrast, has exported more energy than it has imported since 2019. That is the quiet foundation of this week’s announcement. The energy dominance Trump pursued in his first term is what makes the demand credible now: a country that no longer needs the oil can finally ask — out loud — whose Navy the Fifth Fleet has been.
Collecting is not a fantasy. It is a precedent. When the Pentagon put the incremental cost of the 1991 Gulf War at $61 billion, allies pledged $54 billion, and the Government Accountability Office later confirmed that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Germany, and South Korea made good on 94% of it within the year. Congress even created a dedicated vehicle for the deposits, and that vehicle, the Defense Cooperation Account, still sits in law at 10 U.S.C. 2608. Trump is not inventing a demand. He is restoring a standard Washington let lapse for 35 years while the customer list of the strait shifted from our allies to our chief competitor.
OPINION: TRUMP’S HORMUZ TOLL LASTED 24 HOURS. THE PRECEDENT DOESN’T EXPIRE
Congress should now lock the principle in. Whatever final form reimbursement takes, the supplemental should move together with pledges: from the Gulf producers whose terminals American power kept in business, and from the wealthy Asian consumers whose tankers sail under its protection. Tokyo and Seoul wrote checks in 1991; both can write them again. The Gulf states, which hosted the campaign and absorbed thousands of Iranian strikes on their territory, deserve credit for basing, fuel, and blood, exactly as in-kind support was credited in 1991. And when Beijing refuses to contribute a cent toward the security of its own oil lifeline, publish that refusal. American voters are entitled to see, on one audited page, who pays for the Gulf and who rides free.
Five presidents guarded the strait for nothing. This one sent an invoice. The job now is to make sure it gets paid.
Burak Oktenli holds a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Professional Studies in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. His commentary on defense and autonomous systems has appeared in RealClearDefense, Royal United Services Institute Commentary, the Defense Post, and West Point’s Modern War Institute.