Kamal Ghorui
TOI Correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump on Sunday announced that the US Navy will begin a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz with immediate effect after a high-stakes diplomatic mission led by the Vice President J.D. Vance ended without an agreement with Iran after night-long talks in Pakistan.“The Blockade will begin shortly. Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION. They want money and, more importantly, they want Nuclear. Additionally and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully “LOCKED AND LOADED,” and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!” Trump said in a post on Sunday hours after the fiasco in Islamabad that saw Vance head home without a deal. Any blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, by the US or by Iran or any other country, will almost certainly be illegal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLCOS) which deems it as a global waterway. While Trump himself has said the US will not be affected by the closure since it does very little business through it, a blockade will have serious economic consequences for China, India, Japan, and South Korea, each of which imports more than 50 per cent of its energy needs through this waterway. Indeed, while the blockade will strangle Iran’s oil revenues, it will also affect energy exports from Washington’s allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and UAE, while allowing energy-rich US to profit from the crisis, something Trump has openly boasted about. “At some point, we will reach an “ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT” basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, “There may be a mine out there somewhere,” that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted,” Trump said. He announced that he has instructed the US Navy to “seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran” and “No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.“While there is no clear evidence that specific countries are officially paying Iran tolls, there are reports of a murky, ad hoc system where individual ships or shipping companies—sometimes linked to certain countries—have quietly paid for safe passage. In any case, there was no toll system or extortion or a blockade of the straits, which accounts for 20 per cent of the global energy flow, before Israel and the US attacked Iran.
