00:00Is the Strait of Hormuz open or not? A simple question, but the answer is far more complex.
00:06Hours after the critical waterway was said to be reopened as part of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire,
00:11the Islamic Republic seems to have shut it all down again.
00:14They blamed Israeli attacks on Lebanon. President Trump says that was never part of the ceasefire
00:20deal. Iran, it seems, says otherwise. The Iranian embassy in Mumbai, India posted to X, quote,
00:26due to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, oil tankers will not be permitted to pass through the Strait of
00:31Hormuz. Pretty straightforward. President Trump has been very vocal about the need for the Strait to
00:35be opened in order for the U.S. to halt its bombing campaigns in Iran. I asked The Post's Washington
00:40reporter Caitlin Dornbos about the role the Strait is playing in these peace negotiations
00:44late yesterday evening. So the U.S. has stopped bombing Iran in exchange for Iran not attacking
00:54ships that pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The problem is there's not a lot of ships passing
01:00through the Strait of Hormuz because they're afraid of Iran attacking them. Iran has been
01:04requiring countries to ask permission first before they go through. The White House today said that's
01:10not what they want. They intended for Iran to be opening the Strait for any vessel to come through
01:16free without paying a toll. That is the intention of the ceasefire agreement. And now we're just kind of
01:24waiting on Iran to see whether or not they actually hold up their end of the bargain.
01:28While the debate about the Strait being open or not continued, there were also reports of that
01:32Iranian toll that Caitlin just mentioned. I asked her about that as well. Iran has said that they
01:38would like to see a toll be placed on the Strait of Hormuz. That's because they see the Strait of
01:44Hormuz being its own sovereign territory. But that's not what international law says. International law
01:49holds that it's an international waterway free for anyone to go and transit through. And so the fact
01:56that they would want to put a toll on that waterway, reportedly as high as $2 million per shift,
02:05I mean, that's a big problem. And it would shake up a big, it would largely shake up global trade
02:12and
02:12global economic security, especially for the countries that really rely on that Strait for their oil.
02:18The president yesterday mentioned that he might be interested in profit sharing with a potential
02:24toll. But the White House seemed to walk that back quite a bit, saying that they support free and
02:29open trade. I think that the president saying that kind of tends to go towards him earlier,
02:36feeling that the world kind of owes the United States something for the United States' role in
02:42securing that Strait.
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