Avash News: While the modern world has been based on a marine-centered economy, and colonial powers have collected billions of dollars in tolls to control small artificial waterways and the world’s straits, the Strait of Hormuz, as the most vital energy vein of the Earth, has been bearing the brunt of the world’s traffic with nearly zero income for decades.
Iran, as the eternal guardian of this gate, has not only paid the lofty costs of securing the strait, cleaning the environment, and directing huge ships, but also has been targeted by plots and military invasions of the same powers that gain the most profits by passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Today, amidst tensions imposed by the US and the Zionist regime on Iran, the time has come for a legal revolution in the Persian Gulf.
The current supervision of Iran’s military forces on traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is not merely a military measure, but is a prelude to a major governmental shift.
The time has come for Iran to end the era of freeloading by the West in Iran’s backyard by adopting a pattern of similar legal regimes in straits such as the Bosphorus and Torres.
The biggest legal fallacy that has been propagated by Western media and think tanks in Washington for decades is the classification of the Strait of Hormuz as free waters. According to geographical realities and even based on the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Strait of Hormuz is an international strait whose entire width is located in the waters of Iran and Oman.
The establishment of a legal regime and receiving tolls in the Strait of Hormuz is beyond a monetary issue and is a unique leverage:
First of all, Iran can have a fixed source of income in dollars in the sanctions era. Every day, between 17 to 20 million barrels of oil are transferred through the strait, which means 30 percent of the world’s seaborne oil. If Iran gets 1 dollar for each barrel of oil for “ensuring security and safeguarding the environment,” it will receive 20 million dollars per day, and more than 7 billion dollars per year, amounting to more than 350 trillion tomans in gross income for the country. This figure amounts to half of the country’s construction budget.
Second, Iran will have intelligence superiority over the enemy’s veins. Through the implementation of a legal regime, each ship would be obliged to provide all cargo documents, ownership details, and its destination to the national center for controlling traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
Third, it will have a punitive effect on hostile countries. Iran can state in its legal regulations that ships belonging to hostile countries such as the US and the Zionist regime and their partners that have threatened Iran’s national security or sovereignty will be required to pay increased fines or special tariffs. This means these countries must directly pay fines to Iran’s treasury.
