Opinion

No retreat at Hormuz — Iran must not control the world’s energy lifeline

Accepting any tolls, quotas or selective permissions would legitimize extortion at a central economic artery

By Ali Shihabi Fox News

Published April 10, 2026 5:31pm EDT

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Iran’s Hormuz pressure campaign: Expert warns of maritime law violations

UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo comments on the Strait of Hormuz, international maritime law and more on ‘America Reports.’

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The Strait of Hormuz is often described as a Gulf choke point. That is too narrow a frame for too large a fact. Hormuz is not simply a regional waterway between Iran and the Arab Gulf states. 

It is a piece of global economic infrastructure, a narrow corridor through which a vast share of the world’s oil and gas trade passes. It is also a route on which shipping, insurance, fertilizer supply, industrial production and food security in much of the world depend. This is not a local matter. It is part of the operating system of global growth.

That is why one principle has to be absolute: There can be no negotiation over freedom of passage in Hormuz. If President Donald Trump were to accept any restriction on transit through the strait, whether in the form of tolls, quotas, selective permissions, inspections manipulated for political ends or any de facto Iranian right to decide who passes and on what terms, it would be a major defeat for the United States and for the world economy. It would mean that Washington had accepted the conversion of a global artery into an instrument of coercion.

That cannot be dismissed as a temporary compromise. Once the principle is conceded, the damage is lasting. The issue is not simply the immediate cost of........

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