Eight Shipowner Groups Asked the UN to Rule Out Hormuz Fees Before Any Party Published a Text

Eight trade associations — the Asian Shipowners' Association, BIMCO, Cruise Lines International Association, European Shipowners, the International Chamber of Shipping, INTERCARGO, INTERTANKO and the World Shipping Council — sent a joint open letter dated Monday 3 August to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez, publicised on 5 and 6 August. The text is public. “Introducing compulsory charges for transit, or service fees that are a toll in all but name, through the Strait of Hormuz would represent a significant departure from established international practice,” it reads. The associations argue that such charges would set a precedent for other international waterways, weaken the transit-passage framework under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and feed into shipping costs, energy prices and inflation. gCaptain identifies the gap they are writing into: the June memorandum of understanding tasks Iran and Oman with negotiating the strait’s administration and its “maritime services” without defining what that phrase covers. The industry is trying to close a definition before a government fills it.

What the associations are writing against exists in at least four incompatible versions, all published within about thirty hours. Fars News, citing a member of the Iranian parliament, described a draft that would bar Israeli cargo and Israel-related vessels, extend restrictions to countries “that have caused damage to Iran” until that harm is compensated, and impose penalties of up to 20 percent of cargo value; CNBC relayed it, said the text is still under review, and reported that the plan would restrict US shipping and that Washington rejects any “impediments.” Fars is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the parliamentarian is unnamed. Against that, an Iranian official told MS NOW there will be “no fees or tolls,” and a US official told ABC News the deal “will not have tolls or charges” — two anonymous officials on opposite sides of the same table saying the same thing. The Times of Israel, citing one senior Iranian official, puts Iran at 5 to 7 percent of cargo value, Oman at around 3, Washington at zero. CBS reported Iran’s state agency saying the parties are close on arrangements but not on a full reopening. In the Oval Office on 6 August, Trump said no deal has been reached and the blockade of Iranian ports stays.

The market is pricing the terms rather than the existence of an agreement. CNBC’s settlements show Brent down about 8 percent over the week to 6 August after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal might be imminent, then up 3.8 percent to $82.49 on Thursday as the restrictive draft circulated; WTI closed at $77.29, up 2.8 percent. Underneath the pricing, the waterway is barely moving: Al Jazeera counted eight transits on Monday 3 August against roughly 130 vessels a day before the war began on 28 February. The security frame hardened on the same day. A senior Saudi official, speaking anonymously to Reuters and CNN, said intelligence indicates Iraqi militias coordinating with the Houthis are preparing imminent attacks under IRGC guidance, with Saudi energy infrastructure, ports and airports named as targets. That warning arrived one day before Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan were due to sign a joint defence agreement — reported by Reuters on two regional sources and by AFP on a source close to the Saudi military, which says Jeddah where other copy says Riyadh. No government announced it on the record, and the contents were not available to any outlet.

Assessment: What changed today is that a non-state party got a document into the file first. Eight associations with named signatories and a published text now sit against three governments represented by unnamed officials and a leaked draft nobody will own. That asymmetry will shape how the eventual text is read: any charge Tehran and Muscat agree will be measured against a standing industry objection lodged in advance at the UN. Distrust in three directions. The Fars draft is one unnamed parliamentarian relayed through an IRGC-affiliated agency, and its 20 percent penalty should be treated as a bargaining position, not a term. The matching “no fees” lines from an Iranian and an American official are coordination, not corroboration. And Riyadh’s warning of imminent attacks came from a party to the conflict on the eve of a signing it conveniently justifies. The substantive fight is over a noun. Tehran has stopped saying tolls and started saying service fees for security and environmental protection; the associations wrote to say a service fee is a toll in all but name. Whoever wins the word wins the precedent, and not only here.