{"id":2186031,"date":"2026-10-08T17:17:44","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T14:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2186031"},"modified":"2026-10-08T17:17:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T14:17:44","slug":"bribing-iran-for-safe-passage-through-hormuz-may-be-happening-more-than-we-think-analysts-allege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2186031","title":{"rendered":"Bribing Iran For Safe Passage Through Hormuz May Be Happening More Than We Think, Analysts Allege"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"columns-holder\">\n<div class=\"add-on-google-widget\">\n<div class=\"add-on-google-heading\">Add Jalopnik on Google:<\/div>\n<div class=\"add-on-google-buttons-row\">\n                    <button type=\"button\" class=\"add-on-google-btn\" id=\"preferred-source\">Preferred Source<\/button><br \/>\n                    <a href=\"https:\/\/profile.google.com\/cp\/Cg0vZy8xMXBneTRxX2Zw\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"add-on-google-btn\" id=\"google-discover\">Google Discover<\/a>\n                <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"columns-holder \">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/2254879\/brent-crude-charging-more-100-barrel-oil-again\/\" target=\"_blank\">Brent Crude<\/a> and West Texas Intermediate prices are both up about 5% today, with Brent sitting just over $105 a barrel and WTI coming in close to $93. Or at least they were at the time of writing. Things could easily get worse, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/2280194\/world-oil-reserves-scarily-thin-oil-over-100-dollars-a-barrel\/\" target=\"_blank\">they also aren&#8217;t as bad as they would be<\/a> if the international community hadn&#8217;t been releasing their oil reserves to keep prices under control. Now, <a href=\"https:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Crude-Oil\/Kpler-Suspects-Gulf-Producers-Are-Paying-Iran-for-Safe-Passage.html\" target=\"_blank\">OilPrice reports<\/a>\u00a0there may be another factor at play here \u2014 Middle Eastern countries paying Iran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n<p>According to\u00a0Kpler&#8217;s ship-tracking data, September saw an average of 16.5 million barrels move through Hormuz each day, with a few days even exceeding the pre-war average of 18 million barrels a day. That&#8217;s largely been possible due to exporters using alternative pipelines and ports, escorts provided by the U.S. Navy, ship-to-ship transfers, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/2173916\/avoid-straight-of-hormuz-trucks-shipping-oil-across-arabian-desert\/\" target=\"_blank\">even caravans of trucks driving oil across the desert<\/a>. But\u00a0Michelle Brohard,\u00a0Kpler&#8217;s\u00a0head of policy and geopolitical risk,\u00a0recently told energy analyst Rory Johnston she believes several Gulf countries have resorted to effectively bribing Iran to let their tankers through:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;I suspect there is a toll that&#8217;s being paid, which is giving these ships safe passage. I also suspect that these countries know that this is unsustainable from a perspective of [the] US escorting [ships], and also unsustainable from them paying Iran 10 percent of their cargo, or 20 percent of their cargo. So you&#8217;re starting to see like what I would call like a race to get out as much as possible, as quickly as possible before the war restarts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote><\/div>\n<div class=\"columns-holder \">\n<p>Iran charging exporters to move their ships through the Strait of Hormuz isn&#8217;t exactly a new idea. Iran already <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jalopnik.com\/2205774\/iran-oil-undisclosed-fees-strait-hormuz\/\" target=\"_blank\">declared itself the Ticketmaster of oil back in July<\/a>, despite longstanding international agreements that require the seas to all be freely navigable. It doesn&#8217;t sound like Brohard has hard evidence to support her claim, but she isn&#8217;t the only analyst talking about it, either.\u00a0Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group, recently told Al Jazeera something similar, saying,\u00a0&#8220;Everything appears to be happening under the radar in the Middle East, from the US convoying ships to Iran quietly charging tolls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If it&#8217;s true that Iran is charging tolls in Hormuz, that would violate the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an agreement that is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/depts\/los\/convention_agreements\/texts\/unclos\/unclos_e.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">much less exciting to read<\/a> than the cool name would suggest. Technically, Iran signed onto the UNCLOS back in 1982, but the country also never ratified the agreement, and Iran&#8217;s leaders long claimed they&#8217;re allowed to make their own maritime laws. Still, you also have to wonder what incentive Iran would have to\u00a0<em>not<\/em> collect tolls from exporters who are willing to pay them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After all, what&#8217;s the international community going to do about it?\u00a0Attack Iran?\u00a0Start a war? Trump and his Republican cronies have already done that. Theoretically, more countries joining the fight would probably go pretty badly for Iran, but so far we haven&#8217;t seen any takers. That said, it does look like the Republicans are preparing to escalate the conflict, with <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/FTIZl\" target=\"_blank\">the Wall Street Journal reporting<\/a> the U.S. has built up its forces in the region and is preparing to deploy as many as 10,000 troops. There&#8217;s no way a ground invasion will go well, but why would Republicans let that stop them this time around?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Add Jalopnik on Google: Preferred Source Google Discover Brent Crude and West Texas Intermediate prices are both up about 5% today, with Brent sitting just over $105 a barrel and WTI coming in close to $93. Or at least they were at the time of writing. Things could easily get worse, but they also aren&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,247],"class_list":["post-2186031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-jalopnik-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2186031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2186031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2186031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2186031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}