Late Tuesday evening, US president Donald Trump said the US had agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran that included the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for the global oil and gas industry.
But while his defense secretary Pete Hegseth vowed that “commerce will flow,” Iran will still be levying a substantial toll for any oil tankers passing through, something that remains unchanged following Trump’s announcement.
The shakedown will involve the use of digital currencies, an extremely popular choice among scammers, human traffickers — and apparently governments trying to circumvent international sanctions.
Hamid Hosseini, a spokesperson for Iran’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union, told the Financial Times that the tariff will amount to $1 per barrel of oil. According to the International Energy Agency, an average of 20 million barrels of oil passed through the Strait before the war began, although it remains unclear how much revenue the toll will amount to, given the massive diversion of tankers.
“Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in bitcoin, ensuring they can’t be traced or confiscated due to sanctions,” he told the newspaper.
Iran has been sanctioned by a number of countries, including the US, over accusations of terrorism and its uranium enrichment program — a key point of contention in the current conflict.
To get around these sanctions, the government has used crypto exchanges to make financial deals, culminating in crypto exchange Binance being accused in July 2022 of allowing Iran to defy American sanctions.
Since the start of the war, cryptocurrency flowing into Iran has surged, in what experts say is a sign the government is trying to provide civilians with a financial lifeline while circumventing sanctions.
Following this week’s ceasefire announcement, Trump has suggested that the United States is hoping to get in on the scheme.
On Wednesday morning, the president told ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl that the United States may try to get a cut of the tolls Iran is charging.
“We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture,” he said. “It’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people.”
In other words, within just 24 hours, the president went from threatening to wipe out a “whole civilization” to suggesting striking a deal with Iran.
As The Hill points out, such a “joint venture” isn’t part of Iran’s ten-point peace plan that the US agreed to this week, leaving far more questions than answers.
Any such plan will likely face steep opposition from lawmakers. Case in point, secretary of state Marco Rubio, who was nominated by Trump, has previously called out Iran’s “tolling system” as “illegal” and “dangerous for the world.”
Despite the alleged ceasefire, the situation appears largely unchanged in the Strait of Hormuz, as the New York Times reports. Vessels aren’t lining up to pass through as of Wednesday afternoon local time, with experts warning that shipping operators may still not want to take the risk.
But even if traffic were to return to normal, it could take a long time for global markets to stabilize, given the vast amount of energy infrastructure the US, Israel and Iran have damaged over the last five weeks.
More on the conflict: The Iran War Has Cut Off Supply of a Gas the AI Industry Desperately Needs
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