Qatar opposes any permanent toll regime in the Strait of Hormuz but is open to negotiating short-term fees tied to mine-clearing operations, the country’s deputy prime minister told the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore on Saturday.
“Qatar and also the partners in the Gulf stated very clearly that charging fees will always impact the consumer, so we are against this,” Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who also serves as Doha’s Minister of State for Defence Affairs, told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the summit. “But for certain times that they say they will use it for mine-clearing or some usage of the fees for a temporary time, this is something that is negotiable.”
The remarks position Doha against any structural transit tariff regime in the chokepoint while leaving a narrow opening for cost-recovery on specific maritime-security operations. Iran and Oman are continuing bilateral talks on a maritime traffic framework for the waterway, the Ada Derana report noted.
Oman’s Maritime Security Centre on Saturday flagged a floating object suspected to be a naval mine inside its territorial waters, west of the Inshore Traffic Zone, and urged vessels to “exercise the utmost caution.” UK Maritime Trade Operations issued a parallel advisory telling commercial shipping to expect “increased naval presence, enhanced force protection postures, potential VHF hailing, and congestion near anchorage areas.” The Joint Maritime Information Centre’s threat level for the strait remains “critical” while the US naval blockade of Iranian ports holds.
Mohsen Rezaei, adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and a former IRGC commander, accused US President Donald Trump on X of “betraying diplomacy for the third time” by maintaining the blockade. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Tehran “said goodbye to the language of ‘must’ 47 years ago” and that “no final agreement has been reached.”
The Qatari intervention drops into the same diplomatic window in which Trump met advisers in the Situation Room on Friday and Tehran publicly disputed several of his added conditions. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth used the same Singapore podium on Saturday to say Washington is ready to resume strikes on Iran if no deal is reached. For Sri Lanka, where April’s monthly fuel bill alone hit $886 million on Hormuz risk premiums, the toll question directly shapes import costs even before any deal is signed.
Source: Ada Derana (Al Jazeera/ANI).
