alt Hacker News> We're at a point where merely achieving status quo ante bellum--i.e., Iran doesn't charge for passage through the Strait of Hormuz--seems to require giving concessions elsewhere.
No, there is no reality where the world will let Iran take tolls here, no matter what happens that part wont happen. The world depends too much on straits being open and toll free, if you let that slide once it will be done by others and that will break down the entire world order.
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Which as they say, will require concessions elsewhere to achieve.
So now you pivoted from the US to the world. Yeah Trump tried that, first to engage 'the Europe', then eastern Asia (Japan, South Korea), now China. He has to own his failure, nobody will solve it for him. Meanwhile the SPR is draining, reserves all over the world are dwindling, thw world is hungry for oil - they will pay the tolls happily.
What you're skipping over here is how that happens. If Iran wants to charge tolls on the strait, someone has to do something to keep Iran from doing that. And when you start gaming out the possible identities of that someone, the possible things of that something... well, the most likely route of this is via negotiating some concessions to Iran (i.e., at minimum sanctions relief and maybe even concrete progress to a nuclear bomb). That assumes that Trump even considers freedom of navigation as something worth concessions in the first place, which I don't take as a given.