WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Iran Thursday to “abandon the fantasy” of imposing fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, warning such actions would imperil any peace deal between Washington and Tehran.
Some Iranian officials have openly mused about schemes to extract money from commercial vessels, including mandatory insurance purchases.
“Fees and tolls are the same thing to me. If you’re paying someone to go there, I don’t care if you call it a fee or a toll or a donation; it’s a toll. That’s how we’re going to define it,” Rubio told reporters in Bahrain. “It’s not even workable.
“Let’s say a ship says, ‘I’m not going to pay the fee.’ It’s not like a toll on the road. You don’t get a ticket in the mail. You get shot at. You sink one ship, not one other ship is going to move,” he added.
“So you might as well abandon the fantasy now.”
Under the memorandum of understanding signed by President Trump last week, the Islamic Republic agreed to allow safe passage through the straits withou charge for 60 days.
But there have been questions about what comes after that period, which has been set aside for negotiations of a final agreement between the US and Iran.
“I think we’ve been clear. You can call it a fee. You can call it a toll, call it whatever you want,” Rubio said. “If you are charging money to use the straits, we won’t support it. We won’t. We won’t tolerate it. We won’t allow it.”
Rubio also stressed: “We want a deal but not at any price. We will not accept a situation where the Strait of Hormuz belongs to any country … [but] we’re going to give diplomacy every chance to work.”
Meanwhile, Trump scored a critical reversal from the Senate, which had voted Tuesday to rein in his ability to attack Iran under the War Powers Act, something that enraged him.
Wednesday’s reversal was a symbolic move to ease tensions with Trump and technically doesn’t impact the prior war powers resolution the Senate greenlit.
Trump huddled with Senate Republicans during their lunch on Wednesday and was “mad as a murder hornet” over the war powers vote, peeved that it could weaken his hand at the negotiating table with Tehran, according to Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)
The president and Senate GOP aired out some of their grievances, though Trump did most of the talking and took very few questions from senators, sources told The Post.
At one point, Trump got into a shouting match with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and lashed out at Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), who missed the vote because he was with the president at an event in Pennsylvania.
The White House later invited Cassidy to the Situation Room for a briefing on the current Iran outlook, with the Louisianan and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) reversing their earlier votes on the war powers resolution.
“Wow! The Senate just changed its vote on Iran from 50-48 against, to 50-47 for. Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy changed,” Trump cheered on Truth Social. “Thank you to [Majority] Leader John Thune, Lindsey Graham [R-SC], Bernie Moreno [R-Ohio], and all. This vote puts Iran on notice!”
