Trump Threatens US Tolls on Hormuz If Deal Fails in 60 Days

For a country that imports nearly half of its oil and gas indirectly, through markets tied to the Gulf, any threat to charge for passage through the Strait of Hormuz is not a distant story but a question of fuel prices at the pump in Belgrade. US President Donald Trump has threatened that Washington could impose American tolls on ships passing through that narrow channel, the world’s busiest oil artery, if a final agreement with Iran is not reached within 60 days. With that, an entirely new angle has entered an already tangled dispute over the strait, shifting the geopolitical reality of the Gulf from security to commerce.

Trump stressed that the interim arrangement provides for toll-free passage over the next 60 days and that, under the deal, Iran will not charge for transit. He does not, however, rule out charges entirely; he merely moves them to the other side. In his words, any tolls would amount to compensation to the United States “for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East,” with the argument that the money would offset past, present and future costs of the American military presence in the region. It is rhetoric that turns a diplomatic channel into a kind of invoice for protection.

What does the toll threat actually mean?

The Strait of Hormuz is the chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil trade passes, so any announcement of additional levies immediately moves estimates on the energy market. Trump’s threat came as a reaction to Iran’s renewed closure of the strait, which Tehran justified by pointing to Israeli strikes on Lebanon. This opens a chain of reciprocal moves in which a security crisis and the question of free navigation become intertwined, and every new layer of charges, no matter who proposes it, ultimately spills over into import prices.

The interim agreement now under negotiation leaves the parties 60 days to reach a nuclear deal, with an explicitly provided option of extension. Within that window, passage would, according to Trump, remain toll-free. What remains unclear is the legal basis on which one state would charge for passage through a strait that does not lie under its sovereignty, and which international maritime law treats as a transit passage open to all flags.

Why this matters for Serbia and the region

For Serbia, which builds its energy stability on a combination of Russian, Gulf-linked and European sources, any disruption in the Strait of Hormuz is transmitted to the price of oil on global exchanges, and from there to the domestic market. The Western Balkans, without large reserves of its own, is particularly sensitive to any jump in the risk premium that accompanies announcements like this. That is precisely why what looks like a distant dispute between Washington and Tehran very quickly becomes a line item in household budgets.

European institutions are for now watching the situation cautiously, aware that imposing any tolls on a key oil artery could shake the fragile balance on the energy market and place further strain on the transatlantic relationship, which is already under pressure even without this dispute. Brussels has reason to fear that commercializing passage would set a precedent that would later be hard to return to the framework of multilateralism.

The next two months will show whether Trump’s announcement is a negotiating lever or a genuine intention. Could charging for passage through waters belonging to others really become a new tool of foreign policy, or will the 60-day deadline remain just another ultimatum with no sequel?