PM Mitsotakis called Iran’s Hormuz tolls completely unacceptable on 8 April. Nine days later a Greek owned VLCC, the Atokos, transited the strait by paying Iran. Greek shipowners hold roughly 20 percent of world merchant tonnage. The gap between diplomatic rejection and commercial payment is exactly what a legitimate multilateral authority resolves.
On 19 April, a spokesperson for Iran’s Central Headquarters of the Holy Prophet announced the official operating rule for the Strait of Hormuz: vessels that pay faster get priority, vessels that do not are delayed. Iran has built, unilaterally and under international rejection, a working toll system. Every design choice is the inverse of what makes Suez and Panama legitimate.
The Suez Canal Authority was built in 1957 during the reopening of the canal, not during the crisis and not years later. The 2026 Hormuz moment is the same narrow window. Thirty days to build the institution, or wait fifteen years for the next crisis.
Thirty non-combatant countries gathered at the Elysee Palace today to launch the Strait of Hormuz Maritime Freedom of Navigation Initiative. The United States was not invited. That absence is the initiative’s most important design choice.
Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, told the IMF/World Bank spring meetings that the industry would rather pay to transit Hormuz than face closure — citing Suez and Panama as precedents. He is the first supermajor CEO to publicly endorse the principle of a structured chokepoint toll.
40 nations are meeting to plan a ‘purely defensive multinational mission’ for Hormuz. The initiative gets three things right — and is missing one critical piece: the funding mechanism that a structured toll system provides.
On April 15 the President said the war was ‘close to over,’ the Pentagon said the blockade had ‘completely halted’ Iranian sea trade, and marine traffic data showed sanctioned tankers transiting Hormuz anyway. All three are true. The contradiction is the structural cost of doing without a neutral chokepoint authority.
On 6 April 2026, President Trump publicly endorsed the idea of charging tolls for Hormuz transit — the first sitting US president to do so. Iran is already improvising fees of $1M+ per ship. Both versions are unworkable. The Suez and Panama models show what a real chokepoint authority looks like.
The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis exposed three failures: no risk-pricing mechanism, no coordinated escort capacity, and no vessel prioritization. A structured toll model addresses each of them.