Iran's PGSA (the Persian Gulf Shipping Authority, the IRGC-backed body administering Hormuz transit fees) launched its X account and vessel-submission portal on Monday 18 May, promising a formal fee schedule the same day . Four days on, the schedule has not appeared. Informal yuan and Bitcoin channels keep clearing transit payments in its absence .
The withholding preserves the case-by-case leverage Ebrahim Azizi, chairman of the Majlis national security committee, signalled on his personal X account on 16 May. A published tariff would lock Tehran into a price; an unpublished one lets PGSA price each vessel against its flag, its destination, and the sovereign behind it. Iraq pays in political engagement, Pakistan in bilateral arrangements for Qatari LNG, China through Beijing-channelled yuan wires. A formal schedule naming those prices openly would force every other counterparty to demand the same terms.
The leverage carries an underwriting cost. Lloyd's of London's Joint War Committee has held Hormuz war-risk cover suspended since 13 April, with hull rates currently at 110-125 per cent of vessel value in over-the-counter underwriting. The committee's published precondition for reopening is a written rulebook from one of the two governing authorities . Lloyd's cannot underwrite an authority that has not published its rules; P&I Club war-risk cover stays commercially unavailable for vessels outside Iran's bilateral arrangements.
The waterway runs on informal pricing nobody can insure. Iran preserves case-by-case discretion on every vessel that asks PGSA for permission; Western underwriters cannot price the resulting risk; the small handful of vessels that did transit on 20 May moved either on bilateral political engagement or by accepting hull-rate exposure. Either Tehran publishes a tariff and accepts the loss of leverage, or Lloyd's writes off the strait for the foreseeable future. PGSA's four-day silence between 18 and 22 May functions as Tehran's working answer.
