Inside the 24-hour sprint to convince Trump to drop his plans to toll Strait of Hormuz

By Adam Cancryn, Kevin Liptak, Kaitlan Collins, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump shocked Gulf allies and many of his own aides with his plan to impose a toll on the Strait of Hormuz, touching off an international scramble to convince him to reverse course on his demand, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The abrupt announcement on Monday came despite months of warnings from Trump’s own advisers not to pursue the idea, for fear it would undermine the US’ own war aims — as well as validate Iran’s purported plans to charge fees in the strait, which the administration repeatedly characterized as illegal.

But as he surveyed the intensifying struggle over the strait that had drawn the US back into full-fledged war, a frustrated Trump pressed ahead anyway.

“The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’” he wrote on Truth Social Monday morning, vowing to charge a 20% toll on all cargo shipped through the strait.

The surprise directive sparked a 24-hour sprint within the administration and across the Middle East to decode the specifics of a proposal that Trump had seemingly come up with on the spot. And while he reversed his plans on Tuesday, the episode further underscored the freewheeling, transactional nature of Trump’s approach to foreign policy, even in the midst of a prolonged war that he has no clear idea how to bring to an end.

Inside the White House on Monday, aides rushed to flesh out the logistics for creating such an unprecedented tolling system, including determining who would pay the fees and how they would be collected. Many officials and outside analysts initially assumed shippers would foot the bill, but the effort was further complicated by another Trump declaration later on Monday that US allies in the Gulf would be paying instead.

Those same Gulf allies’ leaders, meanwhile, were working frantically to get Trump on the phone in time to talk him out of the idea altogether.

By Tuesday morning, the flurry of appeals from nations — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar — had succeeded. Instead of the US collecting tolls, Trump announced that the countries had pledged to pour new, undefined sums into US investments.

The Gulf nations have already committed to invest trillions of dollars into the US, though it remains unclear how much of that they will actually spend over the next several years.

“I put it out yesterday, I thought it was good,” Trump said Tuesday of his unprecedented tolling plan. “I was called by different people, different countries, kings and emirs, and all of the people that we all know and we all love. And they’ve been, frankly, they’ve been very strong partners. And they said we’d love to do it a different way.”

A White House official echoed Trump’s public remarks, saying that given Iran’s violations of the agreement to keep the strait open, the president “has always kept all options on the table, and he wisely determined that the United States should be reimbursed for our many years of protecting ships transiting this waterway. Ultimately, our Gulf allies offered to provide investments into the United States, which the President found preferable.”

Since returning the US to active conflict last week, Trump has asserted that the war is effectively won and that another intense-but-short bombing campaign is all it will take to bring Iran to heel. In the meantime, he’s insisted that access to the Strait of Hormuz remains free and open.

But those claims have so far been contradicted by the reality on the ground, including Iran’s continued ability to sufficiently threaten any vessels that attempt to traverse the strait. Shipping traffic through the key waterway has dropped sharply as a result, sending oil prices soaring to levels not reached since before the US and Iran’s peace agreement last month.

Trump had threatened to impose a toll on the strait at previous flashpoints in the war, amid frustration with the outsized importance of a shipping route that he’s complained about having to secure alone despite the US itself not relying on it for oil.

In April, he suggested the US should charge fees because “we’re the winner” in the war, only to later float the concept of a “joint venture” with Iran to control the strait. More recently, he threatened to establish tolls if Iran failed to reach a permanent peace deal, characterizing it as “reimbursement” for the costs of the war.

Yet those suggestions had prompted consistent pushback from Trump’s advisers, people familiar with the discussions said. They argued that new restrictions would only push oil and gas prices higher, adding to the political pressure on Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections, which are already expected to hinge on affordability concerns.

Perhaps more immediately troublesome, they warned, it would contradict principles that the administration had laid out opposing the concept of any country imposing fees on a waterway.

“No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in late June, just before signing the US on to a joint statement rejecting “any tolls, fees or attempts to assert control” over the Strait of Hormuz. “That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here.”

Confirming those fears, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was quick to seize on Trump’s comments Monday, saying: “POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service.”

“20% is of course too much. We will be fair,” he concluded.

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