A Western-owned merchant vessel has openly transited the Hormuz Strait for the first time since the beginning of the war in Iran, raising questions over whether the owners paid the $2 million ‘Tehran Tax’.
Maltese-flagged, French-owned container ship the Kribi crossed the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday evening, departing the Persian Gulf, states publisher L’Agence France Presse. The medium-sized container ship did so with its radio-broadcasting transponder (AIS) turned on, and in doing do was the first Western owned or operated cargo ship to openly pass Iran since the beginning of March, the very early days of the joint U.S.-Israeli Operation Epic Fury.
The Kribi container ship, which is owned by the French Marseille-headquartered maritime transport group Compagnie maritime d’affrètement – Compagnie générale maritime (Maritime Freighting Company – General Maritime Company, CMA CGM) broadcast the message “OWNER FRANCE” during its transit. It it is not the first ship to have attempted to advertise its neutrality in this way, with Chinese ships broadcasting “CHINA OWNER” in early March in a bid to be spared from drone strikes.
In at least one of those cases, a “CHINA OWNER” ship was struck by Iran and set alight in the Persian Gulf on March 12th.
Other Western-owned ships may well have passed the Strait while running dark, with their AIS turned off. Reuters recently reported that Greek operated oil tankers may have run the gauntlet by travelling at night with its AIS transponder off to attract as little attention as possible.
Iran has long traded on its blackmail threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key strategic waterway controlling access to the Persian Gulf, through which 20 per cent of all world sea-traded oil passes daily, the vast majority destined for Asian markets.
The extent to which Iran truly exerts control over the Straits now is open to question, given the month-long U.S. campaign of destruction against Iran’s navy, air force, missile launchers, and sea mine stocks. Nevertheless, the psychological element of the possibility remains.
President Trump has invited the nations which stand to gain most from keeping the Strait open to take a hand in its defence, including France. Yet President Emmanuel Macron, who has remained aloof on the conflict on all so far, decried the suggestion of using navies for one of their core purposes, maintaining freedom of navigation, as “unrealistic”.
That a French ship transited the Strait raises the possibility, therefore, that France has become the first Western nation to acquiesce to Iranian demands for a $2 million toll to pass. This would follow Chinese ships known to have paid the cash — a relatively small figure compared to the value of a ship and its cargo, but theoretically worth billions of dollars a year in protection money to Tehran — and transited in the past week.
Iran’s cash for passage system has been compared to a toll booth or a Tehran tax.
If true, it would demonstrate something of a rift between France and its allies in their approach to dealing with Iran. While the United Kingdom has loudly protested against the American strikes and refused to get involved, London has at least taken the lead on a theoretical future international task force to police the Strait, post-war.
The British government overnight said it “comprehensively rejected” the notion of Iran charging ships to pass the Strait and called for a “immediate and unconditional reopening” of the sea lane, reports the Daily Telegraph. British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Iran must not be allowed to “hold the global economy hostage” — as it has done with its Hormuz threat for decades — and said allies should “comprehensively reject the imposition of tolls on vessels which seek to pass through”.
CMA CGM is the world’s third-largest container shipping company, an industry which is dominated by European and East-Asian businesses. The largest shipping container business in the world from outside the Euro-Asian sphere is Israel’s ZIM Shipping.
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