Darren Lehane

Here, if their Iranian government is going to impose a toll, however it's dressed up, it will be a toll.

And your previous speaker or guest there indicated that, in his view, that would be against international norms.

It would.

It is a long-standing principle of international customary law that a coastal state such as Iran or the United Arab Emirates should choose to do so, or Oman.

isn't entitled to levy a toll on shipping passing through it.

Other speakers will say, oh, Iran isn't a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which formalizes this, or the United States isn't a signatory to that convention.

But it's an international principle of customary law.

So it's been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands of years, in fact.

Going back to the Roman times.

Absolutely.

I mean, the Iranians have established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority to try and formalise what it is they're trying to do.

But if this is permitted to happen in the Straits of Hormuz, notwithstanding the fact that it would overturn hundreds and thousands of years, or at least a thousand years of precedent,

Countries or states in places like the Straits of Malacca, for example, another shipping lane, why wouldn't they do the same thing?

Why wouldn't the United Kingdom or France impose a toll on ships passing through the English Channel, for example?

Why wouldn't we impose a toll in Ireland on shipping passing through the Irish Sea?

These rules develop organically for a reason.

It benefits most people most of the time to have a safe,

firm and fair system for the transiting of international goods.

And if that doesn't exist, problems arise.

For example, how would you go about paying a toll to the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, as the Iranians are calling it,