Trump announced the 20 per cent Hormuz toll on Monday. He dropped it on Tuesday. The about-face took 25 hours. The reason, in Trump's own words, was that the region's kings and emirs called and said: 'We'd love to do it a different way. We'd love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars.' Trump said he preferred that arrangement. 'I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait,' he said.

That sentence is correct. It is also the sentence Marco Rubio used on June 23 to describe what Iran was doing. DiploPolis noted on Tuesday that Rubio had said 'no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway — that's existing international law.' Trump violated his own stated principle on Monday. He restored it on Tuesday. He used Rubio's words to do so. The principle was not the governing consideration on either day.

What governed Monday was a calculation: charge 20 per cent of cargo and recover the cost of protecting 'a very rich portion of the world.' What governed Tuesday was a different calculation: drop the toll and receive billions of dollars in Gulf investment pledges. The freedom of navigation principle was correct on both days. It was also, on both days, subordinate to the transaction. The toll disappeared not because international law was remembered but because the kings and emirs made a better offer.

This is not a new pattern. The US-Israel war on Iran has been governed by calculation from the beginning while deploying the language of principle. The war was launched to assert freedom of navigation and prevent Iranian nuclear proliferation. The ceasefire was calculated exhaustion. The Versailles MOU was a calculation of political timing ahead of midterm elections. The toll was a calculation of reimbursement. Its removal was a calculation of investment. Principle appears consistently in the language. It has not determined a single decision.

Iran, watching this, has drawn the only reasonable conclusion. The Revolutionary Guard Corps announced Wednesday that if Washington keeps trying to control the Strait, it will close all other regional oil and gas export corridors — the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb, the Gulf of Oman — that benefit the US and its allies. 'Regional energy exports,' the IRGC said, 'are for everyone or for no one.' This too is transactional. Iran built a toll booth because it calculated the Strait was leverage. It threatens all routes because it calculates total closure is the only remaining bargaining chip. Both sides are negotiating through infrastructure. Both are calling it principle.

Trump also threatened, in a Fox News interview broadcast on Tuesday, to strike Iran's bridges and power plants next week unless negotiations resume. 'Next week comes the bridges. We're gonna knock out all their power plants. We're going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.' He said he would 'save the energy targets for last.' The UN human rights chief Volker Türk has said that 'under international law, deliberately attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime.' The country that dropped its toll because Gulf kings promised investment is simultaneously threatening to destroy civilian infrastructure if Tehran will not deal. The consistency is perfect: everything is a transaction, everything is leverage, everything is negotiable. The only non-negotiable element is the framing — that Washington acts from principle and Tehran does not.

The Gulf kings who called Trump on Tuesday did not do so because of principle either. They called because Gulf investment pledges are worth more to them than a US toll regime that would have driven shipping through alternative routes, reducing Gulf port revenue and complicating their own calculations. The system has many participants. All of them are transacting. All of them are speaking the language of principle.

Trump said he doesn't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait. He said this 25 hours after charging one. The principle returned when the price was right. That is not principle. That is how the war is being run.