Trump Warns Ships That Pays Toll Fee At Strait Of Hormuz, Says ‘Won’t Be Safe In High Seas’
US President Donald Trump says that the US is going to start “blockading any and all ships trying to enter or leave, the Strait of Hormuz”.
In a lengthy new post on Truth Social, he says that “the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, nuclear, was not”.
He says that “at some point” an agreement on free passage will be reached, but “Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, ‘There may be a mine out there somewhere,’ that nobody knows about but them.”
In the same post Trump also says that he’s “instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran”, and that the US Navy is going to start ” destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits”.
“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” he says, adding, “Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be blown to hell !”
“The blockade will begin shortly,” he says.
In a second Truth Social post, Trump says, “Iran promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and they knowingly failed to do so.”
“This caused anxiety, dislocation, and pain to many people and countries throughout the world,” he says.
“As they promised, they better begin the process of getting this international waterway open and fast!”
"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz." – President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/JInBTLyu2s
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 12, 2026
He goes on to talk about the Islamabad negotiations, saying he’s been “fully debriefed” by Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and negotiator Jared Kushner, while praising the efforts of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his team.
He says that after “close to 20 hours” of negotiations “there is only one thing that matters — Iran is unwilling to give up its nuclear ambitions.”
“In many ways, the points that were agreed to are better than us continuing our military operations to conclusion, but all of those points don’t matter compared to allowing nuclear power to be in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people,” he says.
The future of the Strait of Hormuz is clearly an immediate concern, and the US is now threatening a blockade.
Not only that, Trump is threatening any country that pays Iran “an illegal toll” to get through the vital shipping lane.
There have been reports that some ships have passed through after paying a very expensive fee to Iran.
Before these talks, he claimed there has been regime change in Iran, with new and more “reasonable” leaders, but they are now “volatile, difficult, unpredictable people”.
But, he did acknowledge there had been points of agreement during these talks, and that’s a sense we had here in Islamabad as we heard technical experts became involved and talks continued into the early hours of the morning.
Trump has also said the US delegation became “very friendly” and “respectful” of Iran’s delegation, which would suggest some sort of working relationship difficult to imagine before this weekend.
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Jensen, chief executive of Vespucci Maritime, says Trump’s threat of preventing safe passage for any ships paying tolls to Iran would also have little impact, as any company doing so would already face sanctions for paying the regime.
“First of all, there are very few ships that pass. There are even fewer of those that pay, and those that pay will already be subject to American sanctions,” he says.
Most shipping companies will continue to wait and see if there is a tentative peace agreement and whether that might hold, Jensen says, and if that occurs, a slow ramping up of shipping may resume.
As for what it would take shipping lines to decide whether it was safe to transit the strait again, he says the honest answer from those firms would be that they don’t know.
“Because at the end of it, it boils down to trust: trust that any agreement between the US and Iranians will hold for a significant portion of time, and that’s a subjective feeling; there is nothing hard and tangible you can point to,” he says.
Trumps Warns Ships That Pays Toll Fee At Strait Of Hormuz, Says ‘Won’t Be Safe In High Seas’
