The United States went to war on February 28 to break Iran. Three months later, Iran is charging $2 million per ship to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, collecting payment in Chinese yuan and Bitcoin, and J.P. Morgan estimates Iran could earn between $70 and $90 billion annually if the system holds. The bombing did not break Iran's leverage over global energy. It formalised it.
The Persian Gulf Strait Authority — Tehran's new regulatory body for the strait — launched its official social media account last week. The tone was bureaucratic and deliberate. Ships wishing to transit must submit ownership details, insurance records, crew manifests and cargo declarations to info@PGSA.ir. A permit is issued after the fee is paid. Some vessels have already paid. The IRGC coordinates clearances over VHF radio. The strait that carried 20 per cent of the world's seaborne oil before February 28 is now a checkpoint — and Iran is the checkpoint operator.
The choice of currency is not incidental. Payment in Chinese yuan means every transaction bypasses Western banking infrastructure, every dollar earned is invisible to US Treasury sanctions enforcement, and every ship that pays is quietly acknowledging Beijing's financial architecture as the alternative to Washington's. Iran is not just charging a toll. It is building a parallel monetary system one tanker at a time, denominated in the currency of the only major power still buying its oil at scale.
Washington's response is a dilemma it cannot resolve cleanly. Sanctioning the shipping operators who pay the toll risks halting the only active oil channel through the strait — which would send energy prices higher, hurt the Global South further and hand Iran a propaganda victory. Not sanctioning them means accepting that the PGSA is a functioning institution, that the toll is a legitimate cost of doing business, and that Iran has successfully converted the world's most important shipping lane into a revenue stream. The economics favour Iran at every point: it costs more to keep a ship anchored indefinitely than it does to pay the toll and sail.
India understood this before the argument was finished. Six Indian-flagged vessels transited the strait on May 18 as a coordinated cluster, following bilateral engagement with Tehran outside the US-led coalition framework. India did not announce this. It did not explain it. It simply negotiated a carve-out and moved its ships. New Delhi's position on the Iran war has always been that its energy interests come first and Washington's coalition comes second. The Hormuz toll made that calculation explicit.
This is what the war has produced at the three-month mark. A ceasefire that keeps killing in Gaza. A G2 settlement in Beijing that nobody else voted on. A Russian president in Beijing quoting proverbs to Xi. And a toll booth at the world's most critical energy chokepoint, run by the country that was bombed, denominated in the currency of the country doing the buying, processing applications at info@PGSA.ir.
The US went to war to establish consequences. Iran established a revenue stream. The consequences, it turns out, flow in both directions.
