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# Key takeaways 

​Proposal & Context: On July 13, 2026, the US proclaimed itself guardian of the Strait of Hormuz and proposed a 20% toll on all transit cargo. Iran had previously claimed a similar right, seeking fees up to $2 million per vessel.

​Rapid Reversal: The proposal for the highest toll in the history of straits lasted only 24 hours. Following calls from Gulf monarchs, the fee was replaced with trade and investment commitments from those states toward the US.

​Legal Baseline: Under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, natural straits guarantee transit passage and prohibit transit tolls (unlike man-made canals like Suez or Panama).

​Historical Precedents: 

​Rhine Robber Barons (800–1800): Up to 62 toll stations operated simultaneously until the Rhenish League demolished the castles by siege.

​Danish Sound Dues (1429–1857): Denmark funded up to two-thirds of its budget via the Øresund toll until a US-led coalition bought out the right of free passage permanently.

​Barbary Corsairs & Scheldt River: Historical examples where tolls were charged either to eliminate commercial competition or as tribute to avoid attack.

​Core Conclusion: Tolls on natural maritime choke points rarely fund actual services; they act as protection money to prevent harm. Such levies persist only as long as the enforcing power maintains dominance over opposing coalitions.

# Translation

The Price of Passage: Hormuz and the Old Temptation to Charge for the Sea

​Anyone navigating the stretch of the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne today sees castles at almost every bend. Tourists photograph them as romantic ruins, but they are stone cash registers. Between the years 800 and 1800, 79 different points on that river functioned as toll stations. Around 1400, 62 operated simultaneously, and a barge had to stop to pay every 6 or 7 kilometers. When the Holy Roman Empire was left without an emperor between 1250 and 1273, local lords multiplied charges without anyone's authorization, giving rise to the term robber barons. The response was a coalition of more than 100 merchant cities, the Rhenish League, which from 1254 resolved the problem by the oldest method: besieging the castles and demolishing them.

​That story seems remote, but it is not. On July 13, 2026, the President of the United States announced that his country proclaimed itself guardian of the Strait of Hormuz and would charge a 20% fee on the value of all cargo crossing it. Iran had been claiming that same right for months, with fees of up to $2 million per vessel. The Iranian Foreign Minister wrote ironically that whoever provides safe passage deserves compensation, but 20% was excessive and Tehran would be fairer. Before the war, more than a fifth of the oil and gas transported worldwide by sea passed through Hormuz. Two opposing powers discussed, amid military escalation, not whether passage should be charged, but who should charge it. The outcome of the episode came in 24 hours, a speed history will take time to match; thus, after calls from Gulf monarchs, Trump himself withdrew the fee and announced it was being replaced by trade and investment agreements from those States toward the United States. The most expensive toll ever proposed on a strait lasted exactly one day.

​It is worth explaining why the proposal alone scandalized lawyers. Current maritime law, codified in the 1982 United Nations Convention, distinguishes two categories. Artificial canals, like Suez or Panama, cross sovereign territory of a country that built and maintains them. That state can charge because it is a work and a service. Egypt collected a record $10.250 billion from Suez in 2023, before attacks on ships in the Red Sea diverted traffic to southern Africa and plummeted those revenues to under $4 billion in 2024. Natural straits, by contrast, are nobody's work, but merely geography. The convention guarantees transit passage there and prohibits charging for it. The intermediate case is the Bosphorus because the 1936 Montreux Convention allows Turkey to charge for lighthouse, health, and rescue services, but never for transit itself. Neither Iran nor the United States ratified the 1982 convention, although many of its rules bind all States anyway through customary law, which arises from the sustained practice of nations. The International Maritime Organization declared that no legal basis exists to impose tolls for crossing a strait. History explains why that rule exists and also justifies why someone always tries to violate it.

​The longest precedent is Danish. From 1429, the Danish crown collected a toll on every ship crossing the Sound, the narrow arm of the sea separating Denmark from Sweden, which was the only gateway to the Baltic. Ships had to stop at Elsinore, the castle city where Shakespeare set Hamlet, and that castle was paid for with the proceeds. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the toll provided up to two-thirds of Danish state revenues. A small country lived for 428 years off its geography, but the system died in 1857, and the executioner was the United States, an emerging power at the time that refused to pay and forced general negotiations. Denmark accepted the perpetual abolition of the toll in exchange for a single indemnity of 33.5 million rigsdalers, paid by the maritime nations of Europe. Washington signed a parallel treaty and paid $393,000 at the time for the eternal free passage of its ships. The historical irony is that the country that led the abolition of strait tolls in 1857 proposed the most expensive one of all in 2026.

​There are darker variants of the same business. The Netherlands strangled the Scheldt River for over two centuries, the artery connecting the port of Antwerp to the sea. That toll did not seek revenue, but rather to kill a rival port for Amsterdam's benefit. Thus, Antwerp paid to exist. Meanwhile, Belgium bought the freedom of the river in 1863 through a ransom paid alongside 20 other countries, and the city still preserves a monument called Free Scheldt.

​In another event, the Barbary regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli took the model to its purest form because it was not a charge for passage through a strait, but for not attacking. The young United States paid those tributes for years, which by 1800 consumed a substantial portion of the federal budget, until deciding it was cheaper to build a navy and impose its will. The Barbary Wars of the early 19th century effectively founded the U.S. Navy.

​The pattern repeats with a regularity that deserves attention. First, a toll on a natural passage never charges for a real service, but for refraining from harm. The payer receives nothing except the promise that the collector will not sink them. Second, payers always have two exits, and history records both. One is evasion, as when Baltic merchants promoted canals to bypass Danish straits, and the detour via the Cape of Good Hope proved in 2024 that even Suez—a legal and legitimate toll—is avoidable if the price or risk rises too high. The other is coalition: just as the Rhenish League stood against the barons, European powers against Denmark, 21 countries rescuing the Scheldt, and the U.S. Navy against Barbary. When the cost of the toll exceeds the cost of organizing against it, payers coordinate. Hormuz contributed its fastest exemplar to this series when the Gulf States, primary payers of the announced toll, formed their coalition over the phone, and the fee dropped in a day. Denmark held out for 428 years. The difference measures less the firmness of each collector than the power of each coalition.

​A complication remains that no previous case had, alongside a final detail common to all. Denmark controlled both shores of the Sound and Turkey controls both shores of the Bosphorus, but the complication is that Iran controls only the northern shore of Hormuz. The southern shore, through which shipping lanes run, belongs to Oman, which at the time of writing maintained a prudent silence.

​And the United States controls neither shore, proposing to charge for a sea that belongs to others by virtue of its naval power. Kpler, a consultancy specializing in global vessel and commodity tracking, estimated that formalizing Hormuz as a payment corridor would yield between $5 billion and $8 billion annually. A 20% charge on cargo would add nearly $15 per barrel to Gulf crude, about $30 million per supertanker. The final detail is that the withdrawn toll did not disappear; it merely transformed. The massive investments promised by Gulf States in exchange for its elimination are Barbary tribute under another name. That is, one does not pay to pass, but for the goodwill of the one holding the fleet.

​History does not repeat itself, but it collects at the same window. The castles of the Rhine are still there, empty, photographed by tourists who do not know what they were. They are the stone reminder of a law no treaty ever wrote: tolls on geography last only as long as the power of the one who imposes them—and not a single day more.

​Key Article Vocabulary & Context

​Robber Barons / Barones Ladrones: Historically refers to medieval German lords who charged illegal tolls along the Rhine. In modern economics, it describes predatory business practices.

​Sound Dues / Peaje del Sund: The historical 428-year toll levied by Denmark on foreign ships entering the Baltic Sea via the Oresund strait.

​Transit Passage: A fundamental principle of customary international maritime law (and UNCLOS 1982) guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international straits.

​Customary Law: International legal principles derived from consistent, long-term state practice rather than formal written treaties.

El precio del paso: Ormuz y la vieja tentación de cobrar el mar