The president of the United States has had three positions on Iran's Hormuz tolls in 48 hours. First: "They better not be" charging fees. Second: Iran is "doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say" of allowing passage. Third — and this is the one that should make every analyst in Washington and Brussels sit up — a US-Iran "joint venture" to collect those same tolls.
A 24-hour window produced three contradictory signals on the single most consequential operational question of the war. That is not a negotiating posture. That is a man who has realized that military force cannot reopen the strait without catastrophic escalation, and who is now improvising a face-saving exit from his own deadline.
The "joint venture" idea is worth examining on its own terms because it reveals the actual structure of the negotiation. Iran has physical control of Hormuz. It is mining the strait, boarding vessels, and collecting passage fees it frames as legitimate transit dues under international law. The US can try to force the strait open militarily — but that means combat operations against Iranian coastal defenses and Revolutionary Guard naval assets in some of the most confined shipping lanes on earth, with oil already above $150 a barrel and inflation accelerating. Trump's own Pentagon has surely briefed him on the risk calculus. Hence the pivot from "stop the tolls" to "maybe we get a cut."
This is not as absurd as it sounds on its face. The Panama Canal charges transit fees. The Suez Canal charges transit fees. The legal difference is that those are internationally recognized sovereign operations, whereas Iran is extracting fees under duress from a war it is currently fighting. But the practical signal to Tehran is unmistakable: the US president is willing to legitimize the toll regime if he can claim it as a deal rather than a concession.
Iran understands this perfectly. Their toll operation — the "Tehran Toll Booth," as it's been dubbed — is designed to be just functional enough to avoid triggering a military response while extracting maximum economic and political value. A few ships pass each day at $2 million per transit. The strait is not technically closed — it is expensive. That distinction matters, because it gives Trump rhetorical room to declare the strait "open" while Iran continues to collect. The joint venture formulation would simply formalize what is already happening de facto.
The problem is not Iran. The problem is everyone else.
The EU rejected the joint venture idea within hours. Oman publicly clarified that it does not charge Hormuz tolls — a pointed reminder that normal Gulf states don't treat international waterways as revenue sources. Starmer flew to the Gulf to discuss "military options" to reopen Hormuz, not business partnerships with Iran. Kuwait is blaming Iran for a drone strike. The 30-plus-country naval coalition exists to protect passage, not to co-manage a toll regime with the country that created the crisis.
If Trump tries to sell a Hormuz joint venture to the international coalition, he will face a basic credibility problem. These governments have spent two weeks defending freedom of navigation. They have deployed warships and accepted economic pain. Asking them to endorse a scheme where Iran keeps the tolls and the US takes a percentage is not a peace deal — it is a protection racket with two beneficiaries and twenty-eight victims.
The deeper problem is what this signals about the Islamabad talks. Vance departed for Pakistan saying Trump gave "clear guidelines" and that he expects "positive" negotiations. But the president's public comments keep moving the target. On Wednesday: reopen Hormuz immediately or face strikes. By Thursday: maybe we share the toll revenue. Iran watches this and draws the obvious conclusion — the US position is fluid, deadlines are flexible, and maximal demands become negotiable within hours if you simply wait. Why would Tehran make concessions to a negotiator whose principal's position has already softened twice before the talks have even begun?
The irony is that a joint venture might actually be the stable outcome of a properly structured negotiation — not as a wartime improvisation, but as part of a comprehensive deal that includes Iranian reconstruction, sanctions relief sequencing, and international monitoring of strait access. The concept is not inherently absurd. What makes it dangerous is the ad hoc way it has emerged: as a presidential impulse rather than a deliberate bargaining position, floated publicly before any back-channel testing, and immediately contradicted by the coalition that would need to accept it.
There is a pattern here that should be familiar. In the first term, Trump announced tariffs, markets cratered, he walked them back, and declared victory. The difference is that Hormuz is not a trade negotiation. You cannot restart the flow of 20 million barrels per day with a press conference. The physical infrastructure — the mines, the boarded ships, the IRGC patrol craft — requires a deliberate, sequenced de-escalation that survives the next presidential post.
Updated probabilities:
Outcome | Probability |
|---|---|
Ceasefire survives 2-week window | 40–50% |
Islamabad talks produce framework | 30–40% |
Hormuz "joint venture" materializes | 10–15% |
Hormuz functional reopening (deal-linked) | 20–25% |
Israel-Lebanon ceasefire (separate track) | 15–25% |
Hormuz sustained partial closure (14-day) | 50–60% |
Congressional war powers vote forced | 25–35% |
US military operation to reopen Hormuz | 10–15% |
Oil sustained >$150/bbl (30-day) | 35–45% |
The joint venture probability sits at 10-15% because while the concept has surfaced, the coalition opposition makes it near-impossible to implement without fracturing the naval coalition. More likely: the idea fades as a trial balloon that got shot down, and the actual Islamabad bargain settles on sanctions relief in exchange for de-mining and supervised reopening — the boring, stable outcome that no one gets to announce on social media.
Three positions on Hormuz tolls in 48 hours. The "joint venture" trial balloon reveals the real structure of the negotiation — and why it's already sinking with the coalition.