IRAN’S approval system for ships being granted safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz remained unchanged on Wednesday in the wake of a tentative ceasefire agreement.

The prospect of increased traffic through the strait, however, is expected to increase the number of vessels having to pay a multimillion dollar toll to transit, according to industry sources.

Any ships deemed to be affiliated with the US or Israel remain blocked, but all other vessels are required to submit to a verification procedure governed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.

In the case of vessels calling directly in Iranian ports, toll fees are not applied.

Similarly, those permitted to transit based on direct diplomatic agreement with their respective governments such as Iraq, India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Vietnam are not being required to transfer funds directly.

Any other ships outside of those pre-existing agreements, however, are going to be asked to pay, according to at least two industry sources directly engaged with toll system being conducted by Iran.

Regardless of the ceasefire agreements, the threat of direct strikes against ships failing to meet Iran’s requirements remained in force on Wednesday.

Tankers in the Middle East Gulf received a radio broadcast that warned they would be targeted with military strikes unless they first gained approval from Iranian authorities.

“If any vessels try to transit without permission, [they] will be destroyed,” said the broadcast, which is in English, according to a recording seen by Lloyd’s List and verified by several industry sources in the region.

Hamid Hosseini, a spokesperson for Iran’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that Iran wanted to collect tolling fees from any tanker passing and to assess each ship.

“Iran needs to monitor what goes in and out of the strait to ensure these two weeks aren’t used for transferring weapons,” said Hosseini, whose industry association works closely with the state. “Everything can pass through, but the procedure will take time for each vessel, and Iran is not in a rush,” he added.

The process of verification, which requires shipowners to submit detailed documentation proving ownership, finance, insurance and trading history details remained unchanged, according to at least two owners actively seeking to exit vessels from the Gulf.

While it is understood that fees for some transits have previously been paid via combination of cryptocurrency and Yuan settled transactions, details of the process remains unclear to many operators who have been seeking clarity from diplomatic and industry sources.

That the approval process is still being negotiated on a ship-by-ship basis also means that details vary between operators. 

The FT report cited a fee structure of $1 per barrel of oil, however the precise fees are understood to vary depending on the ship’s national affiliation.

According to one security source an unverified memo has been circulating ranking countries from 1 to 5 in a system that carries a tonnage tax based on that ranking. Lloyd’s List has been unable to independently verify the authenticity of the memo.

Despite repeated requests for state support, some shipowners report that many European government departments remain in the dark on what systems are in place or the legality of how to navigate Iran’s unilaterally approval system.

A lawyer advising a Chinese carrier with several chartered-in containerships in the MEG said owners now are scrambling to find out how the transit fee is actually collected — but noted that the cost would likely end up with the charterer in the end.

Even if a viable payment channel is found, the question of who bears this “toll” remains another issue, the lawyer said, with no one sure how to legally characterise the fee.

Where a charterparty already contains a piracy or ransom clause, the owner could try to invoke it to claim reimbursement of the transit fee by analogy. However, there is a risk that such clauses could be challenged as encouraging or facilitating unlawful conduct — effectively rewarding a state acting in violation of international law — and therefore unenforceable as contrary to public policy under English law.

Where the existing charterparty contains no express clause on “ransom” fees, the owner's fallback would be to argue for an implied indemnity — on the basis that the fee was incurred as a direct result of complying with the charterer’s employment orders to transit the strait.

But this argument remains entirely untested in the courts.

“There’s no case law on this, so we simply don’t know how it would go,” the lawyer added.