Iran announces plans to bring in maritime fees for strait of Hormuz

Iran has announced plans to introduce a system of maritime fees in the Strait of Hormuz in two months, after the 60-day period of negotiation that has been triggered by the signing of the memorandum of understanding.Tehran, claiming a historic victory over the US, said the strait was under its control and a European plan for a naval mission to escort ships though the strait would not be welcome.The warning came as the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, had said Israel “will maintain the security zone in south Lebanon as long as our security needs require it”, referring to the more than 600 sq km of Lebanese territory occupied by Israeli troops along the border.On Iran, Netanyahu stated that Israel would continue to “adhere to the supreme objective” of not allowing Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons.Iran insists the deal referring to territorial integrity of Lebanon requires a full Israeli withdrawal, making Donald Trump accountable for Israel’s withdrawal.Israeli drone attacks and artillery shelling continued on Thursday morning. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a series of attacks against Israeli forces in the Kfar Tebnit-Ali al-Taher area in recent days.The threats to the agreement came as a planned formal ceremony marking the signing of the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran on Friday was cancelled.Trump and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, have already personally signed the document, translated into English and Farsi.The cancellation of the formal ceremony means the chief mediator, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, will now not travel to Switzerland, a blow to Pakistan that would have welcomed a moment in the global limelight.The US vice-president, JD Vance, said he still intended to travel to Switzerland but admitted he did not know what would happen.Iran said technical-level talks between the two sides would go ahead at the luxurious Qatari-owned Bürgenstock mountain resort by Lake Lucerne.The talks, which are the first direct meeting between the two sides since they met in Islamabad on 12 April, will be focused on how to implement the 14-clause memorandum, including how to lift sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and ensure that commercial traffic starts to flow freely through the Strait of Hormuz.At a White House briefing, Vance said the order had already been sent out lifting the blockade on Iranian ports, and more than a dozen ships had travelled through to Iran. US troops would be drawn down to prewar levels within 30 days, he said, adding that copies of the memorandum formally released by the Trump administration had been sent to Congress.In a blow to those hoping the Strait of Hormuz would be restored to full and permanent freedom of navigation, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, said the strait needed to be managed, which would come at a cost.But the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, challenged the Iranian plan. He said: “The management of the strait was working fine before the conflict. There were no issues. Ships were navigating freely. There was no safety issue. There was no environmental issue.“So why should we now, as a result of a conflict, accept some novel arrangement that is going to be imposed on it? That, to me, doesn’t make sense. So I think we need to go back to the way it was, and that worked fine, and that should be the end of it.”Muath Alwari, the UAE’s director of policy planning, said the UAE was arguably the recipient of the most Iranian strikes during the war, which targeted hotels, tourist sites and civilian infrastructure.He added that the UAE’s relationship with Israel got stronger during the war, as it found Israel to be a solid defence partner.The country’s engagement with Israel would only deepen after the war, Alwari said. “It does not change our calculus that motivated us in the very beginning to pursue the Abraham accords.” The accords normalised relations between the UAE and Israel.The two statements from key Gulf figures came as the Iranian foreign ministry started the long process of repairing relations with its Gulf allies. It hopes that the Gulf will contribute substantially to a planned $350bn Iran construction fund, which the US has agreed to establish and is supposed to attract largely private-sector investors in the region.Seyed Ali Madanizadeh, Iran’s economic minister, said the US waiver on Iran’s oil exports would not produce an economic bonanza, with experts saying in the short term it could lead to only a small increase in output.He said the war had led to a significant decrease in revenues, a drastic drop in oil income, which had intensified the budget imbalance, adding: “It’s not like everything will just return to normal.”