The UK is resisting talk of a Trump or Tehran tollbooth on the Strait of Hormuz with a diplomatic campaign to uphold international freedom of shipping.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper will use a visit to the UN's International Maritime Organisation and keynote address on Thursday to give full backing to freedom of navigation and the laws of the sea.
US President Donald Trump told the ABC News channel on Wednesday that the creation of a joint venture to manage navigation in the strait with a toll was on his mind.
“We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it – also securing it from lots of other people,” Mr Trump said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
Crossings are currently closed by Iranian threats and traffic has slumped from triple figures a day to single digits. Both Iran and the US have used the ceasefire struck earlier this week to suggest the waterway, which carried a fifth of global oil exports, could be controlled in the aftermath of the fighting.
“The fundamental freedoms of the seas must not be unilaterally withdrawn or sold off to individual bidders,” Ms Cooper is to tell the City of London late on Thursday.
“Nor can there be any place for tolls on an international waterway. The international consensus that Britain helped build more than a hundred years ago in support of maritime freedoms we will champion again now. Freedom of navigation means navigation must be free.”
Ms Cooper welcomed the Pakistan-negotiated ceasefire agreed earlier in the week. She said it was a “vital step” towards regional stability and it was important it was built into a lasting deal that also opened Hormuz, a 33km-wide waterway between the Arabian Gulf and Sea of Oman
She said: “International maritime law says this is a transit route between the high seas which means that freedom of navigation rules apply.”
Saeed Khatibzadeh, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister, used an appearance on the BBC to claim the strait was not international waters but a territorial possession of his country and of Oman. While Tehran would work to restore safe passage, he said this would depend on “the goodwill of Iran and Oman”.
“The neighbourhood is very important for us, so it's not a matter of give and take,” he said. “Definitely, we are going to provide security for safe passage, and it is going to happen after United States, actually withdraw this aggression.”
Ms Cooper, by contrast, wants “concerted international pressure to be clear we will maintain those principles of freedom of navigation”.
France also made its position clear on Thursday. Establishing a toll system in the Strait of Hormuz would be unacceptable as that would break international law, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France Inter radio.
“It is not acceptable, because freedom of navigation in international waters is a common good, a common good of humanity that must not be hindered by any obstacle or toll,” Mr Barrot said.
“No one would accept it, quite simply because it is illegal. International waters are free for the movement of ships,” he added.
