The War Is Bad. The Cease-Fire Doesn't Exist. The Future Is Awful.

Iran taking operational control of the Strait of Hormuz has enormous ripple effects.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/09/iran-war-cease-fire-strait-of-hormuz-oil-shipping-toll/


Credit: Jonathan Raa/Sipa USA via AP Images

It took not even 24 hours for the tollbooth on the Strait of Hormuz to snap shut. Israel, whose desires to act as a saboteur and trap the United States into the war it desperately wanted us to conduct couldn’t be more obvious, spent Wednesday pounding central Beirut with airstrikes, hitting 100 targets in ten minutes, with at least 112 dead. Iran and the U.S. have very different conceptions of whether Lebanon counts as part of the nascent cease-fire. After Donald Trump confirmed that in his view Israel and Lebanon are in a “separate skirmish,” which conflicts with the view of Pakistan, the country that mediated the dispute, Iran showed its displeasure by closing the strait to oil tankers, and now the Revolutionary Guard Corps has threatened military action against “aggressors in the region” (Israel) if the Lebanon attacks continue.

Meanwhile, at least five Gulf states have seen more attacks despite the alleged end to hostilities. A drone hit a major Saudi oil pipeline, really the only way the country can bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian ten-point plan that was the basis for the stand-down differs from what Trump claims is the Iranian ten-point plan, and I’m trying to figure out who is less trustworthy. To put this atop the heights of ridiculousness, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in the space of a few minutes in Wednesday’s briefing that it would be “false” to say that the strait was closed, and also that the strait must be opened “immediately.” So the cease-fire is working in every way except ceasing the fire, and as a prelude to a final agreement it hasn’t even gotten around to agreeing on the terms. Other than that, things are peachy.

In such a fraught moment, casting our eyes forward to the aftermath may seem premature. But no matter whether hostilities resume or not, the future for the Middle East and the global economy is precisely the same as I said last week: Iran has operational control of the Strait of Hormuz. And this Wall Street Journal quote from a bank analyst sums it up: “This has been the economic catastrophe that everybody could have predicted, that everybody was predicting, but Trump did it anyway.” International maritime law prohibits payments for passage on a natural waterway, but operational control is bigger than a tollbooth. A toll, however “illegal,” is just a cost of doing business that gets folded into the overall product. That toll is something like $1 per barrel of oil, paid in Chinese yuan or crypto. (Oman, which is on the other side of the strait, would split the fees with Iran, making them perhaps the biggest winner in this whole thing.)

Another dollar on each barrel is not going to crash the global economy, though the total cost will be a huge windfall for Iran. But the thing about a tollbooth is the gate can go up or down, as we’ve already seen hours after the non-cease-fire cease-fire. If Iran is attacked or even mildly offended, they can shut the gate. If Iran decides a country isn’t operating in their interests and a ship either bears that country’s flag or has goods destined for that location, they can shut the gate. If Iran’s oil exports aren’t doing well enough and they don’t want to compete with an OPEC rival, maybe they shut the gate. There are also a ton of mines in the harbor around the strait that dissuaded vessels from passing even when it was allegedly open. The Iranians are threatening missile attacks on any ship that tries to go on their own. And a spokesperson for Iran’s exporters union told the Financial Times that they would have to inspect each ship to deter guns or other weapons from traversing.

snip