Toby Howell

for the World Cup, they're going to go in and open the Strait of Hormuz themselves.

Football is coming home.

Yeah, this toll system is quite complex.

It's not just, you know, pay a toll, raise the arm, go through the Strait of Hormuz.

Step one is you have to contact an intermediary.

That is usually a company that is linked to the IRGC.

You submit detailed documentation, your ship's ownership, the flag you fly under, the nationalities of the crew.

Then the IRGC runs a background check, makes sure you have no links to Israel, the U.S., or any other states that Iran is considering an enemy right now.

Then comes a toll negotiation process.

Right now, you mentioned that $2 million number.

That is usually the starting point because they charge $1 per barrel of oil that is contained on these very large crude tankers.

They also have a ranking system, one to five for nations in terms of how friendly they rate them.

So you better hope you come in at the right end of that scale.

Then once everything checks out, they provide you clearance, they provide you an escort, they issue you a permit code.

So you literally have a secret code that you have to broadcast over the radio to say like, hey,

We've done our negotiations here.

We are a safe, we deserve safe passage.

And then the route itself, you go through this very narrow corridor that all 57 transits of the Strait of Hormuz have gone through.

So there clearly is like a safe passage way that you have to navigate.

So that's generally how the negotiation process starts.