Iran's Islamic Consultative Assembly (the Majlis) is drafting legislation to formalise the Strait of Hormuz toll as Iranian domestic law, with finalisation due next week, according to an unnamed lawmaker cited by Fars news agency. 1 The bill would codify what began as an IRGC field improvisation into statute, transforming a wartime military mechanism into a permanent legal claim over one of the world's critical waterways.
The significance of the timing cannot be overstated. IRGC Navy Commander Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the man who personally built the toll and vetting system from scratch, was killed in an Israeli airstrike hours before this legislation was publicly confirmed. He was killed at 3am on Wednesday. By that afternoon, the Majlis legal committee in Tehran was drafting his toll system into permanent law. Twenty-six vessels have now transited under the IRGC vetting regime; operators submit IMO numbers, cargo manifests, and crew names to IRGC-connected intermediaries, receive a clearance code, and follow an approved route under escort past Larak Island. At least two paid in Chinese yuan. India continues to transit while denying it pays. 2
Iran's UN representative told the IMO this week that vessels linked to 'aggressor parties' have forfeited the right of innocent passage, the international law principle that merchant ships may transit straits freely. 3 Iran frames its vetting system not as a blockade but as legitimate self-defence, a framing designed to survive any post-ceasefire legal challenge.
The closest historical parallel is Egypt's 1957 Suez Canal nationalisation law, which survived the tripartite invasion and became the permanent legal basis for Egyptian canal authority. Iran appears to be following the same playbook: establish physical control during a crisis, then legislate before the crisis ends, so that any resolution begins from the new legal baseline rather than the pre-war status quo. The right of innocent passage existed for decades before this week. Iran told the IMO it no longer applies to hostile parties. If that position is codified in domestic law, every future negotiation over Hormuz will begin from the position that Iran holds a legal claim, not merely a physical one.
