BEIJING. Iran’s ambassador to China announced Saturday that Beijing and other “friendly” nations will receive special considerations under a new fee regime for the Strait of Hormuz, signaling that Tehran intends to turn its wartime control of the world’s most critical energy chokepoint into a permanent strategic and financial asset.
Speaking at the World Peace Forum in Beijing, Ambassador Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli declared the waterway a matter of “national security” for Iran after the four-month war with the United States and Israel that ended in an uneasy ceasefire last month. He confirmed that new “service fees” would be charged to vessels transiting the strait, but that countries which stood by Tehran during the conflict would be treated preferentially.
“We will definitely have special considerations for China, because China is a friendly country,” Fazli said. “Special treatment we should award to countries which are friendly to us.”
The remarks mark the clearest signal yet that Iran intends to formalize a two-tier access system for the 34-kilometer-wide (21-mile-wide) chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes every day. About 20 million barrels of crude transited the strait daily before the war.
China, which buys the vast majority of Iran’s crude oil exports and largely stayed on the sidelines during the conflict while calling for restraint, stands as the most obvious beneficiary of the preferential regime. The strategic alignment between Tehran and Beijing has deepened through years of oil-for-diplomacy trade, and Iran appears to be cashing in that relationship now.
Fazli insisted the new arrangements would be implemented “with the collaboration and cooperation of the state of Oman,” which shares jurisdiction over the strait’s waters. He argued that the fees would not violate international maritime law, describing them as compensation for navigation services, security guarantees, and environmental protection rather than transit tolls.
The semantic distinction matters. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, international straits require freedom of transit passage. Charges for specific services rendered are legally distinct from tolls on passage itself, and Tehran is carefully framing its revenue mechanism to survive legal challenge.
The fee structure that has emerged from the months of crisis, reported by maritime analysts and shipping sources, follows a two-part model. Every vessel pays a fixed transit fee determined by size class: $60,000 for standard commercial ships, $100,000 for super-class vessels (beam over 40 meters, length over 230 meters, or deadweight over 70,000 tons), and $300,000 for mega-class ships. On top of this, a capacity-based charge applies by vessel type. Crude oil tankers pay $3.25 per ton of capacity tonnage. Dry bulk carriers pay $0.80 per deadweight ton. LNG carriers pay $2.10 per cubic meter of cargo capacity.
Ancillary surcharges include a flat $5,000 security fee, a 7% dangerous cargo surcharge, a 4% war-risk premium, and a 12% surcharge for priority transit slots. Vessels receive a 15% discount for transiting in ballast and a 5% eco-vessel rebate. The total bill for a fully laden very large crude carrier can reach $1 million to $2 million per voyage, shipping data suggests.
Iran has already collected its first revenue from the regime. A senior lawmaker told the Tasnim news agency in late April that transit charges had yielded initial payments deposited into the Central Bank of Iran under the management of the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, a body established in early May to administer the system.
The United States and Gulf Arab states have rejected the fees outright. President Donald Trump has called the strait an international waterway and insisted no country may impose charges. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that any toll regime would make a permanent diplomatic settlement with Iran unworkable.
Some European governments have come to accept the reality that some form of fee is inevitable, according to people familiar with the discussions. But they have pressed Iranian and Omani officials to apply any levy uniformly, without discriminating by vessel nationality. Fazli’s announcement of special treatment for friendly nations directly contradicts that European position and threatens to deepen the diplomatic divide.
China’s Foreign Ministry has called for unhindered shipping through the strait as being in the interests of all parties. Beijing has a strong incentive to accept special terms rather than push for universal free passage, because the preferential regime offers it a competitive advantage over other Asian importers. Japan, South Korea, and India also rely on Hormuz transit for major portions of their crude and LNG imports and would face the full weight of the fee schedule.
The practical situation on the water remains volatile. At least eight ships attempting to leave the Persian Gulf along the Omani coast turned back between Friday and Saturday, the clearest evidence that the reopening of the strait following the interim peace deal remains incomplete. The 60-day free transit window written into last month’s ceasefire is running out, and no permanent agreement on the strait’s management has been reached.
For global oil markets, the implications are profound. Before the war, the strait carried roughly 20 million barrels per day. The disruption has already removed well over 10 million barrels per day from effective global supply, and the transition from crisis closure to a permanent fee regime represents a structural shift in the cost of seaborne oil. Even if shipping volumes return to pre-war levels, the new charges, layered on top of war-risk insurance premiums that already run $2 million to $2.5 million per transit, add a permanent tax on every barrel crossing the chokepoint.
China’s crude imports collapsed to 6.36 million barrels per day in May, their lowest level in almost a decade and down from 11.39 million in February. The country’s strategic inventory draw and its turn to Russian and Saudi alternatives illustrate the scale of the disruption. A preferential arrangement on Hormuz fees would give Beijing a path back to full import volumes at lower marginal cost than its competitors, further entangling its energy security with Tehran’s control of the strait.
The question that hangs over the entire arrangement is whether Iran can enforce a discriminatory fee regime in the face of U.S. opposition, European objections, and the practical challenges of maritime enforcement in cooperation with Oman. What is clear is that the old order, in which the Strait of Hormuz was an open international waterway secured by the U.S. Navy, is not coming back.