The week of September 28 to October 5 was the worst for tankers in the Strait of Hormuz since the war began on February 28. Tracking sources counted at least 12 attacks on oil, LPG and LNG carriers in those seven days. The IMO, which is slower to verify, had confirmed nine. The previous worst week, in mid-July, had eight.

Where the ships were hit matters more than how many. Almost every strike in that stretch landed in the southern channel, a few miles off Oman’s coast. That is the lane shipowners moved to in June, when Muscat’s corridor offered a way past Iran’s tolled northern route. It was supposed to be the workaround. Iran is now treating it as a firing range.

The headline number is 20% on all cargo shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, framed as reimbursement for American protection. The legal objections write themselves and have already been written. The more interesting question is who the levy actually lands on, and the answer is not Iran.

It lands on Qatar.

The Only Cargo That Cannot Escape

Around 93% of Qatar’s LNG exports and 96% of the UAE’s leave through the Strait of Hormuz. There is no alternative route. Crude has partial escapes — Saudi Arabia and the UAE hold somewhere between 3.5 and 5.5 million barrels a day of pipeline bypass capacity, enough to matter at the margin. Gas has none. You cannot put liquefied natural gas on a truck, and no pipeline exists that can move Ras Laffan’s output to a non-Gulf loading point at any volume worth discussing. Qatari LNG goes through the strait or it does not go.

Two governments signed the same 14-point memorandum on June 14. They are now describing two different documents.

Washington’s version: the Strait of Hormuz is “permanently toll-free,” full stop, no negotiation. Tehran’s version: the free-passage clause was always a 60-day bridge, after which Iran collects “service fees” for security, environmental protection, and insurance coordination — dressed up as a Dardanelles-style tariff, not a toll. Both readings can cite the same MOU, because the MOU only commits to zero charges for the 60-day ceasefire window and says nothing definitive about what comes after.

A shipping lane that hugs the Omani coastline is doing something the IRGC cannot tolerate: it lets tankers leave the Persian Gulf without asking Tehran for permission. Oman, working with the International Maritime Organization, has now formalized a temporary, fee-free corridor through the southern half of the Strait of Hormuz, with explicit navigational coordinates issued jointly by Muscat and the IMO. Muscat frames it as freedom-of-navigation housekeeping. For Iran, it is a structural threat to the one piece of leverage the war left it holding.

The United States has stopped arguing with Iran over who controls the Strait of Hormuz and started prosecuting the transaction itself. On May 27, the Treasury Department added Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority to the Specially Designated Nationals list under Executive Order 13224, the counterterrorism authority reserved for entities that finance terror. The designation does not contest Tehran’s claim to administer the strait. It renders the act of buying passage a sanctionable offense, and in doing so it inverts the entire logic of the toll regime.

Iranian military spokesman Mohammad Akraminia issued an explicit threat this week that countries following the United States in imposing sanctions on Tehran would face difficulties transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The statement, reported by the state-aligned Tasnim news agency, dropped any residual pretense of Iranian restraint in the waterway. Akraminia added that the enemy had recognized it could not break the resolve of Iranian forces and would ultimately be compelled to accept a ceasefire on Tehran’s terms.