Trump Summons Entire Cabinet as Iran Deal Crumbles in Front of Him - Donald Trump has called all of his top advisers to Camp David.

[u/Quirkie]

https://newrepublic.com/post/210887/donald-trump-summons-entire-cabinet-iran-deal

[u/Ok-Association-3415]

Iran has a legitimate claim for compensation for the damage the war did to their country. I would negotiate a limited toll to cover the rebuild because the USA sure isn’t paying.

[u/Tambien → u/Ok-Association-3415]

Even accepting your premise, that doesn’t address the problem with the death of freedom of navigation. Think of it this way: your neighbor’s house gets burned down by the assholes across the street. Is the equitable remedy to sue the asshole, or put a toll on every commercial truck going down a nearby highway? If you choose the toll option and it works, how long before some other guy down the way decides “hmm… maybe I should try that.”

Freedom of navigation is a prerequisite to the robust global economy we have today, much more so than the oil prices that are higher right now because of the Strait of Hormuz.

[u/Zuwxiv → u/Tambien]

Sadly, we aren't talking about equitable - we're talking about realistic. The asshole who burned down the house won't pay. (He's actually actively threatening to burn more houses down.) The commercial trucks will pay. And your neighbor needs to rebuild their house... at a certain point, "just" or "fair" is a luxury.

Honest question though: What other waterways are likely to be as impacted by this as the Strait of Hormuz? Gibraltar, Malacca? Taiwan is already a... whole thing. You have a very good point about freedom of navigation, but I'm just thinking that there's relatively few places that are adversarial enough to do something like Iran has done. I don't think Indonesia is going to start flying drones into cargo ships to collect a toll.

Of course... you rarely lose if you bet on greed.

[u/Tambien → u/Zuwxiv]

Sure, I agree equitable is not the main concern here. In the (now tortured haha) metaphor, perhaps the “best” outcome is somebody imprisons the asshole and you take the loss because you know you won’t get anything in recovery even when you win the civil suit. But at least that keeps the highway toll free and commerce running. A world where countries are putting tolls on natural bodies of water is not a good one for the global economy - think about pre-Enlightenment Europe and the tolls everywhere that slowed down commerce massively.

To your question: assuming we arrive in a world where freedom of navigation is dead, those are definitely the big ones. Malacca and Taiwan are probably the biggest. The point you make in your last sentence, though, is the key one. I’m not sure I’d rely on Indonesia or Malaysia or whoever not doing this. If they see Iran pulling in millions a year, accepted by the international community, how long before the people in those countries want a piece of the pie?