The Islamabad memorandum promised no charge for sixty days only, and an Iranian administration of the strait after that - which is the thing Tehran has spent this week finishing.
Iran is not waiting for permission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It is finishing a toll road, and the timetable was written into the agreement that was meant to end the war. On 23 August the Majlis national security commission approved the service-fee article of its Strategic Action Plan for the strait. That was seven days after the sixty days of free passage bought by the Islamabad memorandum of 17 June expired on 16 August.
Read what was actually signed. Iran's president described the terms as safe passage for commercial vessels with no charge, “for 60 days only”, with the future administration of the strait to be settled by Iran in consultation with Oman and the Gulf states. Three days later the US president posted that there would be no tolls for sixty days and none after that either — “unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America”. Both governments put their name to a document whose free period had an end date. What they disagreed about was who collects once it passes. Sixty days from the signature is 16 August; from the 14 June framework it is the 13th, from the post it is the 19th. Every version of the arithmetic lands in the same week.
The charge is older than the law. Iran founded the Persian Gulf Strait Authority on 5 May and launched it formally on the 18th to manage transits and collect passage fees: permits by email, payment in yuan, reports of up to $2m a transit, and a system said to have been running informally since March. The complete-closure order of 11 June is recorded on this site as ending a period of selective passage at those prices. So the vote on the 23rd introduced nothing. It made an existing toll statutory, and the same evening the authority set out the enforcement — fines, detention, confiscation, restrictions on future passage — then next morning extended the offender list to ships that merely cooperate with a violator.
What is being metered is a tenth of a strait. Since 7 March, Hormuz has carried 7.2 vessels a day against 72.8 in the 180 days before the closure, and 0.22 million tonnes of cargo a day against 2.76, a fall of 92 per cent by weight. The first 23 days of August ran at 4.9 vessels and 1.9 tankers a day. What the passage is going to cost is still not public: the plan reported on 6 August put it at up to 7 per cent of cargo value with fines of 20 per cent, but the article approved on the 23rd was described only as fees for services rendered. Do not read the price as confirmation of any of it: Brent's first two closes that could have priced the vote fell 4.34 per cent and 4.82 per cent, the steepest two-day fall since 4 August, but seventeen other posts and statements priced into that same 24 August close, an American all-clear on mines priced into the 25th, and this site's own table cannot separate a day of official statements (a median move of 2.79 per cent) from a day with nothing recorded in it at all (2.66 per cent, p = 0.92).
The announcements, though, have stopped contradicting each other. The Iran-Oman corridor of 25 August is the consultation with Oman the memorandum named; the deputy foreign minister said the next morning that it is not a reopening and the waterway stays militarily closed; on Saturday the IRGC Navy defined the closure as applying to ships seeking passage without coordination with Iran. That is not a closed strait. It is a licensed one, and Tehran suspended its commitments under the memorandum on 18 July, twenty-nine days before the free-passage clause it is now honouring in reverse ran out.
So stop scoring this as closed against open. All twelve dated reopening contracts that have resolved resolved NO, and the two live year-end legs settled on 22 August at 29 per cent and 23 per cent. The question in front of them is no longer whether Tehran relents. It is whether a permitted, charged, Iranian-administered strait with an Omani corridor through it counts as a reopening at all. The two things worth watching are the fee schedule, which has not been published, and the transit count, which has answered every announcement so far the same way.
Iranian statement · 2026-06-17 Pezeshkian on the signed Islamabad terms: no charge for 60 days only, then administration of the strait by Iran with Oman and the Gulf states
Truth Social · 2026-06-20 No tolls in the Hormuz Strait for 60 days, and none after it expires unless imposed by and for the United States source
Iranian statement · 2026-05-18 The SNSC launches the Persian Gulf Strait Authority to manage transits and collect passage fees, reportedly up to $2m a transit, paid in yuan source
Event · 2026-08-06 Iran's parliament reviews tolls of up to 7 per cent of cargo value and fines of 20 per cent for violators source
Iranian statement · 2026-08-23 MPs approve Article 3 of the Strategic Action Plan: service fees for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz source
Iranian statement · 2026-08-25 Iran and Oman agree a temporary joint maritime corridor and a joint mine-clearing project in the strait source
Iranian statement · 2026-08-29 IRGC Navy: the strait is closed to all ships seeking passage without coordination with Iran, until the US meets its commitments source
Data series · 2026-08-25 EIA Brent official closes through 25 August and PortWatch Hormuz transit and capacity counts through 23 August (timeline.json)
Computed, not asserted — every number here is derived from public data: official EIA Brent closes via FRED, IMF PortWatch transit counts, Polymarket and Kalshi odds, and source-linked curated events. Method and caveats · Atom feed · llms.txt
https://chokepointdata.com/analysis/2026-08-29-sixty-free-days/