There is nothing new under the sun. Five centuries ago, the Portuguese conquistadors imposed a toll (“cartaz”) for ships trying to get through the Strait of Hormuz. Then, after the capture of Hormuz by the Shah of Iran and the mercenaries of the British East India Company, Persia and Britain agreed to split the loot from the cartaz.
And now that Trump has learned the hard way about the Hormuz choke point, he wants to turn it into a profit center. He has suggested that an end to the war might include Iran and the US sharing the power to charge tolls to pass through the Strait (about $2 million per tanker!).
The wee problem with Trump’s plan to collect passage tolls is that it violates international laws against piracy.
In 1801, a “new nation conceived in liberty,” the United States of America, declared all such tolls by trolls a crime against humanity. President Thomas Jefferson declared that henceforward, the US would be world’s protector of open seas. And he meant business. Jefferson sent the US Marines into Libya to defeat the Barbary pirates who were exacting tolls from ships passing along Africa’s Mediterranean coast.
Few Americans today know about Jefferson’s war against piracy. It survives mostly in the Marine Anthem, “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” the pirates’ capital.
But now, Donald “Bluebeard” Trump wants in on the extortion racket. When asked who would operate this new toll booth in the Gulf, Trump said, “Maybe me. Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is, whoever the next Ayatollah.”
How interesting: Trump recently called Iran’s Ayatollahs “deranged scumbags” and “lunatics” — which, apparently, he thinks qualifies them as perfect business partners.
So, in the end, the ultimate goal of Trump’s war is not to end the Iranian regime’s murderous rule, but to go into business with them to shake down the planet.
