27JUL

France and Japan file flag-state protests

2 min read

10:27UTC

France and Japan lodged formal flag-state protests after CMA CGM Kribi and Mitsui OSK Sohar LNG appeared on Trump's 12 April toll-interdiction list, a provision CENTCOM left out of its operational order.

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Key takeaway

Two G7 allies are formally protesting a presidential post CENTCOM has already chosen not to enforce.

France and Japan lodged formal flag-state protests after the French-flagged CMA CGM Kribi and the Japanese-flagged Mitsui OSK Sohar LNG appeared on Donald Trump's 12 April toll-interdiction list . Both vessels had previously paid Iran's Hormuz toll in yuan, which was the trigger for their inclusion on the list. CENTCOM's operational order for the 13 April blockade omitted the toll-interdiction provision entirely, leaving both vessels off the US Navy's target list despite their appearance on the president's.

That is the gap the protests sit in. France and Japan are treating a Truth Social post naming specific G7-flagged merchant vessels as a formal US position requiring a formal reply, because UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) obliges the flag state to defend its registered ships against threats of boarding. The protests invoke the convention implicitly: the president has named their vessels for interdiction, the named vessels' flag states have an obligation to protest, and the formal protest goes onto the bilateral record regardless of whether CENTCOM is acting on the posted order.

The practical asymmetry is that Paris and Tokyo are responding to a document, the presidential post, that has no corresponding signed instrument and no implementing order from the commanding combatant command. French and Japanese diplomats are negotiating against a text the US executive branch has not formally produced. For the flag states, that is still the text they must answer. For CENTCOM, the operational order it self-generated continues to exclude toll-paying vessels from interdiction, and the diplomatic protests have no effect on the operational mandate because the mandate already omits the action being protested.

The instrument gap that defines the whole operation surfaces here with unusual clarity. Two G7 allies are in formal protest against an executive order that both exists (on Truth Social) and does not exist (as a signed presidential instrument), enforced by a command that has chosen not to implement its most aggressive provision. Each party is reading a different authoritative text. The protests are now on the bilateral record; the interdictions they protest have not happened; the social-media post that triggered them remains the only American document any party can cite.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

France and Japan have filed formal diplomatic complaints with the United States after two of their ships appeared on a list of vessels President Trump threatened to intercept. The two ships, the CMA CGM Kribi (French-flagged) and the Mitsui OSK Sohar LNG (Japanese-flagged), had previously paid Iran's transit toll to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump posted on social media that all ships that had paid Iran's toll would be stopped by the US Navy. France and Japan, as the countries whose flags the ships fly, are legally required to defend their vessels under international maritime law, so they lodged formal protests. Here is the strange part: the US Navy never actually received orders to stop those ships. CENTCOM, the US military command running the blockade, left the toll-paying provision out of its orders entirely. So France and Japan are officially protesting against a presidential social-media post that the US military has already decided not to enforce. This shows, in the most concrete possible way, how the absence of a signed presidential order is creating confusion: two close US allies are in formal diplomatic dispute with America over an order that exists only as a post, enforced by a military that has chosen to ignore that particular part of it.

First Reported In

Update #68 · Sanctioned tankers slip the blockade

Reuters / Free Malaysia Today· 14 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Trump's toll-payer order targets allied ships

Trump's toll-interdiction order omitted from CENTCOM's operational order (ID:2284) is the direct trigger for the French and Japanese formal flag-state protests: both vessels appeared on the presidential list CENTCOM chose not to implement.

Occurred 12 Apr 2026

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This Event

France and Japan file flag-state protests

Two G7 allies are formally contesting a US presidential order that CENTCOM is not enforcing.

Different Perspectives

Asian buyers (India, Japan, China, South Korea)

Asian refiners are absorbing 62% of Yanbu's 3.75m b/d flow, the bulk of Saudi Arabia's rerouted crude now clearing east rather than into the Atlantic basin. That destination split leaves Asian buyers more exposed to any single Yanbu-specific disruption than under the kingdom's normal multi-terminal export pattern.

Russia / Lukoil

Moscow loses the roughly $14-a-barrel legal headroom the frozen price-cap formula would otherwise have released toward $58, even as Urals trades below Russia's own $59 budget floor. The shadow-fleet insurance workaround the freeze leaves untouched remains the actual route sanctioned crude clears above $44 in practice.

European Union / Council

Brussels adopted its 21st sanctions package on 23 July, letting boarding states confiscate and sell shadow-fleet cargo outright and freezing the G7 price cap's automatic adjustment to mid-2027, converting indefinite tanker storage into recoverable value for enforcers.

Freight and tanker desks

The Baltic Exchange's TD3C VLCC benchmark, most desks' reference for Gulf freight, prices a single-vessel voyage while Saudi shippers now pay for two Suezmax charters at roughly double the transit time. That gap leaves any book hedged purely on TD3C carrying unrecognised Suezmax basis risk on the bulk of Saudi rerouted volume.

Mediterranean refiners (Sines, Trieste, Augusta)

Refiners already facing aframax rates up 198% month-on-month now watch Ain Sokhna draw 23% of Yanbu's rerouted crude through the same SUMED corridor they lean on for product backfill. Fujairah and ARA stocks near record lows leave little room to absorb a thinner Suez product flow.

Saudi Arabia

Riyadh has rerouted its entire western-coast crude book through Yanbu and Suez since the 23 July Bab el-Mandeb embargo, absorbing a roughly $2m-per-voyage Suezmax premium on every diverted cargo. The kingdom's fiscal breakeven near $108 a barrel makes that freight cost, not the blockade itself, the more durable drag on export economics.