Doug Casey: I did a bit of research. Definitions are important; poorly defined words can only confuse issues. A "strait" is a narrow, naturally occurring body of water that joins two larger ones. They're traditionally considered international waters. Hormuz is the best known at the moment. The Strait of Malacca between Indonesia and Malaysia narrows down to about 40 miles at its narrowest point. It has no tolls, although Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore have talked about them, since they incur expenses to clear Malacca of pirates. Turkey charges tolls for the Bosphorus, joining the Black and Mediterranean seas, not for a right of passage, but to cover the significant costs of the traffic.

Straits are natural choke points with significant economic value, similar to canals. The difference is that canals are man-made. Egypt grosses about $10 billion, netting about $4 billion per year, from the Suez Canal, controlling one end of the Red Sea. The Houthis closed off the Bab el Mandab strait at the other end of the Red Sea for a while; maybe they'll do so again… The Panama Canal grosses about $5 billion and nets about $3 billion.

The Suez and Panama canals aren't directly comparable to the Strait of Hormuz because they were constructed at great cost and are entirely within the bounds of one country. However, they give us an idea of its value. Around 100 large ships typically transit Hormuz daily. The Iranians seem to be talking about charging some or all of them about a million dollars per transit, amounting to about $35 billion per annum. A VLCC oil tanker typically carries about 2 million barrels of oil. That would amount to a fee of perhaps fifty cents or a dollar a barrel. Which is, to use a currently fashionable word, "sustainable".

Of course, none of this was even an issue before the American-Israeli attack provoked the Iranians to institute controls and tolls as a countermeasure. Before the attack, it was free passage.

What can be done about the current state of affairs? We don't have a very good idea of what the reality is. All we know is the propaganda from both sides—but we hear vastly more US propaganda, for obvious reasons. I'd say there's nothing that the US military can do about it, because the Iranians have a thousand kilometers of rugged coastline from which they can attack any ship in the Gulf with drones, missiles, or mines, not to mention the 20-mile-wide Hormuz itself.

The U.S. Navy apparently withdrew the Fifth Fleet from Bahrain, at the northern end of the Gulf, before the attack, and has since been forced to withdraw over a thousand kilometers away from the Iranian shore for fear of attack. It's reasonable to believe that the damage done to the USS Gerald Ford was caused by missile strikes, as opposed to a supposed "laundry fire." The Navy doesn't want to risk a few million-dollar missiles taking out a $15 billion aircraft carrier with all of its planes.

As of April 13, the US met Iran's blockade with its own blockade. If it succeeds, that can only worsen "bigly" the economic damage of the war. But it's unclear how the US will enforce it. Will it forcibly board and capture ships that come through? What if the ships resist boarders? What if they're Chinese ships? Since the situation is changing unpredictably by the day, by the time you read this, the Iranians may have sunk a couple of US destroyers, and Trump, unhinged as he is, may threaten to nuke Tehran.