LONDON – Shipping has again ground to a halt in the Strait of Hormuz, as the United States Navy has resumed its blockade of Iran’s ports.
Although Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad claimed on July 14 that his country’s oil exports “will continue as before”, the US Central Command responsible for operations in the Middle East has warned that any vessel suspected of entering or leaving Iranian waters without US authorisation is now liable to interception, diversion and capture – by force if necessary.
With the reimposition of the US blockade on July 14 at 4pm ET (July 15, 5am Singapore time), the last surviving provision of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that US President Donald Trump signed with Iran just 28 days ago is technically dead.
What replaces it is something stranger and potentially more dangerous: confusion over what the US really wants, coupled with a determined Iranian effort to drag all the rest of the region into a potential new war.
The latest bout of violence erupted after Iran attacked a number of ships which allegedly ignored Iranian-mandated navigation routes through Hormuz. The US claimed that Iran’s insistence on controlling the movement of ships not only violated the terms of the MoU but also ran contrary to principles of established international law that no state may close an international waterway used to carry a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.
However, on July 13, Trump considerably muddied the waters by declaring that the US will henceforth be the “guardian” of the strait and is therefore entitled, as a matter of “fairness” – to be “reimbursed” with a payment of 20 per cent on all cargo shipped through it, allegedly to cover “all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the world”, as Trump put in on Truth Social, his preferred social media platform.
The irony of a US president prepared to go to war over the principle of freedom of navigation, only to turn around and demand control of the waterway, was not lost on the Iranians.
Trump was “absolutely right”, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on the X platform; “whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service,” Araghchi added, claiming that Trump’s proposed fee was “of course too much”. Iran, Araghchi promised, tongue in cheek, “will be fair”.
The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) was less amused. In what was one of its strongest protests to date, this agency of the United Nations announced on July 13 that it “stands firmly against charging fees for passage through straits used for international navigation”.
US officials blindsided
It is obvious that Trump’s claim for “reimbursement” for US military operations around Hormuz has caught all US officials by surprise. Nobody seems to know how the US could tax shipping, who will value cargoes for the purpose of such a tax and what will happen to shipping companies that refuse to pay. Nor is it clear whether Trump intends to tax only ships carrying goods to and from Iran, or whether his demand extends to all shipping.
The fact that US officials are in no hurry to clarify any of these technical points indicates that this entire story may be just classic Trump bluster, perhaps intended to silence the President’s critics about the gigantic costs of the current US military operation. Back in April, Trump also suggested that the US may be disposed to tax shipping through the strait, only to forget about the idea soon thereafter.
What has changed?
The danger in the coming weeks is not a repetition of the full-scale war but something worse. Three things have changed.
First, Iran has widened the war’s geography. Its strikes on Gulf states and its warning on July 13 that any Gulf cooperation with the US blockade will be treated as “an act of war” put Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain in the line of fire in a way they largely escaped earlier this year.
Iran’s decision to hit Oman and Qatar, the two regional states that until now did everything possible to mediate between the US and Iran is particularly puzzling. Oman condemned what it described as “irresponsible acts” and summoned Iran’s ambassador in protest, marking a dramatic deterioration in relations between the two countries. If Gulf ports, desalination plants or loading terminals are hit in earnest, the conflict stops being a US-Iran duel and becomes a regional war with no obvious off-ramp.
Second, the Iranian regime is weaker, angrier and less coherent than the one Washington fought earlier this year. The hardliners who inherited power after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his most senior associates were killed in the first wave of the US and Israeli air attacks on Feb 28, will draw the obvious conclusion that agreements with the US administration are worth nothing. Iran may, therefore, be more determined to fight this time.
Pickaxe Mountain: A potential primary flashpoint
Finally, the blockade itself is an escalation machine, a potential trigger for something far worse. Trump is already hinting at the possibility of broader US strikes at an underground Iranian nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain.
“Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice, big, fat shot right in the front door,” Trump said.
International inspectors have never been permitted to visit Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified facility which the Iranians started constructing in 2020 near the city of Natanz, which contains two other Iranian nuclear sites that the US military bombed in June 2025.
There are few indications to suggest that the Iranians are resuming nuclear work at the Pickaxe Mountain facility. But what remains clear is that, if the US decides to bomb the facility, it will have to use special ordnance, such as the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) bomb, among the heaviest and most powerful non-nuclear bombs in the American arsenal, because the site is so deeply buried.
For the moment, such a major escalation in US operations against Iran appears unlikely.
It is also noticeable that, while the Iranians have no compunction in aiming missiles and drones at their Gulf neighbours, they have not fired a single shot at Israel, obviously because they are aware that this would merely provide an excuse for the Israelis to draw Iran into a far bigger conflict. Both Washington and Tehran still have reasons to prevent the confrontation from returning to full-scale war.
But the US and Iran may be facing a prolonged cycle of low-level violence in which each side tests how far it can go without triggering another major war. And the risks of miscalculations remain very high.
