Iran's Ghalibaf Says Hormuz Tolls Begin After 60-Day Window
Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran will charge ships for services in the Strait of Hormuz after a 60-day window, contradicting Trump's toll-free pledge.
Developing story — this page will be updated as information becomes available.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Thursday that Iran will charge ships for services in the Strait of Hormuz after a 60-day transition window, asserting Iranian sovereign rights over the waterway and stating the strait “will not return to” prewar conditions. The remarks were carried by Middle East Monitor and tracked in the Guardian’s Thursday live coverage.
What we know
Ghalibaf, who signed the Geneva memorandum of understanding for Iran on Monday alongside US Vice President J.D. Vance, framed the toll regime as flowing from Iran’s status as a coastal state with sovereign rights over the strait. The 60-day window pegs the start of charges to mid-August on the calendar Ghalibaf used. The Guardian live blog characterized the position as the chief Iranian negotiator’s, putting the statement at the most senior Iranian principal on the deal short of the foreign minister and the supreme leader.
The remarks contradict, on the record, President Trump’s Tuesday pledge that the strait would reopen Friday and remain toll-free on a permanent basis. They convert what had been an Iranian official’s trial balloon on Monday into a parliament-speaker-level statement attached to a specific timeline.
In parallel, three Saudi-flagged supertankers carrying roughly six million barrels of crude transited the strait on Thursday, Middle East Eye reported, the largest single-day Persian Gulf loading move since the conflict closure. Brent traded lower in early Asian hours after the US-Iran signing, per OilPrice.
What we don’t know
The Iranian foreign ministry has not posted a parallel statement and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office has not endorsed or contradicted the toll framing. The White House has not responded to Ghalibaf’s remarks on the record as of this writing. Whether the 60-day window is an Iranian negotiating position, a parliamentary view, or a binding element of the Geneva instrument’s Iranian-side reading is not specified. The Geneva text itself has not been published in full. This is a developing story.
Context
The toll question is the single largest operational gap inside the Geneva framework. The US side has framed reopening as full, permanent, and toll-free; the Iranian side, now at the parliament-speaker level, has framed it as conditional, sovereign-state-charged, and time-limited. Both framings cannot operationally hold, as the desk’s Tuesday analysis traced. Ghalibaf’s intervention is the first public Iranian principal-level break in the silence the desk’s Thursday tell-window note flagged as the diagnostic variable for the Friday ceremony.
The remarks also test the executive-only ratification posture the US chose. An instrument one principal characterizes as toll-free and the other characterizes as toll-bearing inside 60 days is not a settled instrument, and the Friday signing arrives with the disagreement on the table rather than resolved before it.
What to watch
- Whether the Iranian foreign ministry or Khamenei’s office endorses, walks back, or stays silent on Ghalibaf’s 60-day toll timeline before Friday’s Geneva signing.
- Whether the White House, State Department, or Treasury responds on the record to the 60-day framing, and whether the response treats it as the Iranian position or as Ghalibaf’s personal view.
- Whether Friday’s reopening goes forward on the toll-free terms Trump pledged, or whether the operational picture — NAVCENT advisories, Lloyd’s Joint War Committee follow-ups, and AIS-visible charter rates — slips into a contested-toll posture over the weekend.
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