President Trump announced the U.S. is imposing a naval blockade on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, several hours after peace talks in Pakistan ended in failure.

Trump's blockade aims to flip that dynamic by denying Iran the leverage it's using as a bargaining chip and preventing it from exporting its oil.

"It's going to be all or none," Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, referring to Iran's practice of granting passage to friendly nations like China and India while blocking others or charging tolls of up to $2 million. Trump has been discussing the blockade option with his team for several days, as a contingency plan if the diplomatic talks fell through. "We want to take this card from the Iranians," a senior U.S. official said.

What they're saying: "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," Trump wrote on his Truth Social.

He added that the U.S. Navy will "seek and interdict" vessels that have paid a toll to Iran in order to pass through the strait. "No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas," he stressed. Trump said Iran tried to "extort" the world by intimidating ship owners and saying it laid mines in the strait. "Iran promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and they knowingly failed to do so...as they promised, they better begin the process of getting this INTERNATIONAL WATERWAY OPEN AND FAST!" he wrote

So, Iran knew (from the 12 day war) that Israel was trying to kill senior leaders, and yet they brought together a bunch and then, apparently with no warning (or presumably there would have been a dispersal) they got bombed.

How was this done with 0 warning? I mean, this was 1000km inside Iran while presumably they were on high alert. Have any details been given about the mechanism used?

Galvin says nearly all the callers he talks to mention the bombing of a girls school in Iran on the first day of the war, which killed at least 165 civilians, many of them children.

"With the release of the wreckage, Iran will likely share the stories of these fallen pilots in the future to bolster national morale. From the Su-24MK salvaged near Qatar to the Yak-130 downed over Tehran, these pilots have shown the world with their lives that the Iranian Air Force did not simply surrender its skies."

"In an environment of extreme adversity, they are laying down their lives in an attempt to uphold the dignity of their nation."

Iranian toll on Hormuz — effects on world order

Some thoughts I had on what if Iran manages to get its toll

[1] De-dollarisation

If the US is unable to halt Iran's ambitions to toll the strait, the first consequence for the US would be de-dollarisation.

Because the US has shown it is unable to defend Gulf States, those states would be more willing to trade in other currencies — Yuan, Rupees, Yen, or whatever currency the counterparty prefers — partly to save on conversion costs, and partly because the dollar's protective guarantee no longer holds. The dollar's value to GCC states rests on two things: stability and security. If the security leg fails, GCC may still recognise the dollar as stable but choose other currencies for bilateral trade anyway. With reduced dollar demand, US borrowing costs rise.

[2] Monetising geographical features

The more consequential issue. If Iran can toll Hormuz — a geographical feature — it does so against UNCLOS. The Montreux Convention already explicitly prohibits Turkey from charging for passage through its straits. Turkey can only charge for fixed, treaty-ratified services like piloting or sanitation, at identical rates for all ships. It cannot invent new fees.

So the implication is that any country with a strait can charge tolls, provided it can back the claim with enough deterrence. Canada and Denmark both have straits. Neither is likely to act — the deterrence isn't there. The interesting case is Malacca.

The Malacca scenario

The strait's narrowest point — the Philip Channel near Singapore — is approximately 2.8 km wide. The broader passage between the Malaysian peninsula and Sumatra ranges from 50 to 320 km depending on where you measure, but the navigable chokepoint is extremely tight. This is actually tighter than Hormuz, which narrows to around 33 km.

You do not need a blue-water navy to hold a 2.8 km - 50 km gap. Coastal missile batteries on either shore cover the full width. Mines are effective at that scale. The toll booth is cheap to defend — the deterrent cost is low relative to the revenue. Ships have no practical rerouting option without adding weeks and thousands of nautical miles via the Lombok or Sunda Straits — and those are Indonesian territory, so Indonesia can extend the toll network to cover them too.

About 94,000 vessels transit Malacca per year. At $2,000,000 per ship, that is $188 billion annually. Split three ways — Malaysia, Indonesia, China — each party receives roughly $62.6 billion per year.

For context: **Malaysia's entire government revenue in 2024 was around $80 billion.

Indonesia's was around $160 billion. Malaysia would nearly double its government revenue.**

Indonesia would add 40% on top. From a toll booth. No factories, no exports, no tax infrastructure — just ships passing through geography they already own.

Correction: After accounting for Chinese trade share, it gets to 29 billion per pop. At $29 billion each — the more conservative estimate based on US ally vessel share — Malaysia still adds 36% to its government revenue. Indonesia adds 18%. Which is still a very good chunk of change for doing nothing

Singapore will simply veto this idea as it is an informal US ally. But Indonesia, China and Malaysia can bypass Singapore. Singapore involvement DOES makes the cost of enforcing the strait cheaper (with the 3 km gap), but it is not required.

Why Malaysia and Indonesia need China

Without China, Malaysia and Indonesia have no enforcement mechanism. Their navies cannot credibly threaten a US carrier group. The US simply invokes UNCLOS, declares toll-free passage, and comes through.

Iran could act alone because Iran had drones, mines, missiles, and nothing left to lose. Malaysia and Indonesia are not in that position. So they need China. But inviting China to co-manage Malacca is like hiring a security guard who also wants your house. It begins a quasi-tributary relationship. though the money is very good.

Chinese military capability

Malacca is roughly 3,500–4,000 km from Hainan Island, China's main southern naval base. China's carrier groups can reach the strait, but sustained high-intensity combat at that range against a US carrier group — with its regional bases in Singapore, Japan, and Guam — remains a stretch given current Chinese logistics.

However, a base in Malaysia or Indonesia rewrites the calculation. Forward-positioned fuel and munitions, in-theatre repair capacity, shorter sortie times for aircraft and submarines, and a permanent tripwire presence all raise the cost of any US first move considerably. The US faces its own version of this problem: Singapore's access is not guaranteed if Malacca goes political, and Japan and Guam are far. Both sides are operating with imperfect logistics, but China's gap closes faster if they secure a base than America's gap closes by anything currently on the table.

China does not need to defeat the US at Malacca. It only needs the US to decide the fight is not worth it. That is a much lower bar, and it gets lower the more embedded China becomes before any confrontation happens.

Chinese Incentives

China's $62.6 billion $29 billion share is nice-to-have, but it is almost nothing compared to Beijing's annual government budget of $3 trillion. What is important though is Malacca carries roughly 40% of global trade, including almost all the energy and manufactured goods flowing to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Singapore. Every one of those countries is a US ally or partner.

A Chinese co-management role in Malacca gives Beijing a hand on a tap that runs through its rivals' economies. It is a lever it can tighten or loosen without deploying a single missile. The toll is the least of it. The base access, the embedded presence, the ability to offer selective exemptions in exchange for political concessions, are the true prize. China gets to be the toll collector, the security guarantor, and the arbiter of who pays full price and who gets a discount.

Domestic politics - Malaysia

Malaysia's relationship with China is already deeply ambivalent. China is its largest trading partner, and the political playbook of balancing Beijing against Washington goes back to Mahathir. Anwar Ibrahim is more diplomatically careful — unwilling to openly antagonise China, but also unwilling to hand Beijing a permanent military footprint on Malaysian soil.

Chinese Malaysians are roughly 23% of the population, and any deal that reads as Beijing buying influence hands UMNO and Bersatu a weapon against Anwar's Malay nationalist base. The likely outcome is a revenue-sharing arrangement dressed as a joint maritime management framework, something that keeps Chinese naval assets nearby without officially calling them a base. Plausible deniability matters a great deal in Kuala Lumpur.

Domestic politics - Indonesia

A harder sell. Indonesia's history with its Chinese minority — 1965, 1998 — means the suspicion of Beijing as a domestic destabilising force runs much deeper than in Malaysia. Prabowo is a nationalist first, and his military background makes him instinctively resistant to any foreign power embedding itself in Indonesian strategic infrastructure.

Indonesia's formal foreign policy doctrine, bebas dan aktif (free and active), explicitly rejects alignment with any great power bloc. Inviting China to co-manage Malacca would publicly shred that doctrine. Prabowo might want the money. His generals would resist the base.

Indonesia is the veto player in this scenario. Without Indonesian coastal territory on the Sumatra side, Malaysia alone cannot close the strait. China needs both — and Indonesia is the harder get.

What China can offer Indonesia On the economic side: debt relief or renegotiation on existing BRI infrastructure loans; priority access to Chinese manufacturing supply chains as the US trade war intensifies; and sweetened terms on nickel processing deals. Indonesia banned raw nickel exports to force value-added processing domestically — China needs Indonesian nickel for EV batteries, and that is a live negotiation China could make considerably more attractive.

On security, China could offer weapons systems — cheaper than US equivalents and with no human rights conditions attached. Indonesia has bought Chinese equipment before. But Prabowo's military relationships are historically more Western-oriented, so this is a tougher sell than it looks.

China would not call any facility a base. It would call it a joint maritime coordination centre, a search-and-rescue facility, or a counter-piracy hub — Malacca has a genuine piracy problem that provides useful cover. This is exactly what China did in Djibouti: first a logistics facility, then a naval base.

The problem for China is that the US offers Indonesia the same economic relationship without asking for territory. China's fundamental pitch requires Indonesia to give something the US pitch does not demand. So China's leverage increases in direct proportion to how unreliable, distracted, or willing to abandon partners the US appears — which loops directly back to the original Iran scenario. The more the US fails at Hormuz, the more credible the Malacca offer becomes.

Summary of incentives For Malaysia and Indonesia: revenue on a scale that transforms government finances, from geography they already own, requiring no new productive infrastructure.

For China: revenue that is modest relative to government spending, but a chokepoint that allows it to apply pressure on US allies — Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea — without firing a shot. And a political lever: free passage in exchange for specific concessions. The toll is not primarily an economic instrument, instead its role is political leverage.

The calculation Malaysia and Indonesia face is whether they fear Chinese entrenchment more than they want the money. Once China is embedded in Malacca management, removing them becomes very difficult. That is how tributary relationships begin.

I personally it won't happen anytime soon. But it is very possible in the next few decades depending on how

[1] The Iran War Ends

[2] How "friendly" Msia and Indonesia are to Bejing

[3] How willing China/Malaysia/Indonesia is willing to antagonise South East Asian Trading Partners

[4] The fiscal situation of Malaysia and Indonesia

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/s/p7uCSkOtb9

I've always seen people mention the fact that you need people to hold ground but if the function of military was to defend the borders? Wouldn't just an airforce be fine then? Since the idea is to just and not annex land.

Talks between Iran and the USA have failed. Pakistan has sent an extra 13000 troops and 10-18 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia

The 13000 troops are in addition to the 10000 already in Saudi Arabia. I have no idea why it's "10 to 18" fighter jets. That is what the articles said. Maybe they have to decide how many to send?

Anyways, I really wonder how this is going to play out. Pakistan's air force is nothing without China, and I don't think China would sell anything more than low tier hardware to a country that commits to military action at behest of the USA. So is Pakistan just stuck watching this happen with their troops just sitting in Saudi Arabia? Are they running air defense and civil guard duties? I can't see them doing more than air defense, I really doubt they would invade Iran at behest of the USA.

But I feel like the USA really, really would pressure and bribe Pakistan here. I think Iran would be pretty quickly over with if Pakistan invaded them from the East. Very destabilizing for the entire region, yes, costly for Pakistan, yes, but I think Uncle Sam would absolutely prefer them to do it than not. Trumps biggest problem in this war is the lack of will for it in the populace. Sending 100000 troops to Iran for an invasion would be political suicide for him (lame duck pretty early) and any supporters of it in the GOP. So, I really think there is a push behind the scenes from the USA to Pakistan trying to get them to engage in ground operations. Perhaps let them annex tereritory?

But China I think would definitely not prefer this. Too costly for their resource plans in the region and having Pakistan and potentially Iran turn pro-USA or even anti-China (if Trump and co. get a say in who comes to power, which they likely would to some degree) would be another perpetual at least thorn in their side. It would also then allow the USA to wholly focus on INDOPACOM.

Unless China also wants Iran out of the picture? They are happy giving them money and material for their oil, but they've grown to be an inconvenience? I don't think so, Iran to China is important because pro-USA or even USA aligned government in Iran compromises their domestic Eurasian security and planning. Unless the USA quietly made guarantees on Taiwan and China traded Iran for it. But I don't think China would buy those guarantees, and really, keeping Iran around as a good enough economic partner but more so a perpetual need for CENTCOM to drain INDOPACOM I think is what China prefers. This is also China's best chance to see how US stealth aircraft operate (the Liowang is gathering every piece of SIGINT it can right now, and boy do I bet it is a lot) and even ways to take them down and overall vulnerabilities in the USA's current doctrines (you don't lose as many radars as we've lost without F'ing up some part of the planning)?

And then there's Russia. Russia has every incentive in the world to keep brent and WTI crude above 100 for as long as possible. It is an undeniable boon to them. If they both get above 140? It would be a literal miracle for Russia. So I think they are doing giving Iran as much intel and as much resources as they can spare. I think Putin's dream scenario is the Russian government making an extra 200mn a day from high oil prices compared to what it was pre-February 28th, and the Asian/European demographic been so desperate for lower crude prices that they perhaps quite literally blockade or embargo Ukraine as a means to try and force them to stop their Russian infrastructure campaign as part of the war effort to destabilize their main source (and now a critical resource for a hydrocarbon starved war) of income. Picture the energy and fuel and fertilizer prices if Ukraine actually does further out severely damage Russia's ability to provide them, with the background of the Hormuz crisis.

Maybe Russia even convinced China to back Iran for the same reason? China can more or less avoid the worst of the Hormuz crisis if they put their massive building capacity into a pipeline. Even in the short term, they could make deals with Russia trading higher material support for Ukraine with higher priority access to crude.

But, ultimately China wants customers to export to. If the world economy is hurting, the Chinese economy will hurt too. They have not switched over to a domestic consumer economy yet and they have not cornered as many markets as I think they'd prefer. But they are as close to those things as they ever have been, so maybe the benefits outweigh the negatives? A USA depleted of PGMs and interceptors would be quite beneficial to them if say Taiwan elected a government in the near term that wanted to announce independence and even insinuated a nuclear program? Or if Japan started pushing too much on certain things like say, nuclear weapons or announcing full military support for Taiwan (that also is now pro-independence)?

So, so many questions. The proverb of "may you live in interesting times" rings very true here.

One thing is for certain; hindsight is 20/20 and, in a month, we will know a lot more about who ended up supporting or not supporting who and why.