PDB Afternoon Bulletin | June 25th, 2026: Iran Reveals Its Plans To Control The Strait Of Hormuz & Venezuela's Earthquake Disaster

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**Mike Baker** (0:42)
It's Thursday, the 25th of June. Welcome to The PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, Iran is revealing its plans for the Strait of Hormuz. Oh, it's got plans. New reporting suggests the regime wants a permanent role in managing one of the world's most important waterways and potentially taking in billions of dollars a year in the process.
Later in the show, disaster strikes Venezuela, where two powerful earthquakes rocked the capital and the surrounding region within moments of each other. We'll bring you the latest from the ground as rescue crews, including from the US, race to find survivors as the death toll continues to climb. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. Well, the shooting may have stopped, at least for now, but the battle over the Strait of Hormuz appears to be entering a new phase. According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, Iran is laying out its vision for the future of one of the world's most important waterways and it's a vision that would give Tehran more influence, more authority and potentially tens of billions of dollars in new revenue each year.
Iranian officials estimate that a new system of fees for what they describe as a variety of maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz could generate as much as $40 billion annually for the countries that would be involved, with Iran, of course, playing a central role in managing the waterway.
Iran isn't talking about simply charging every tanker a fee that passes through the Strait. Instead, officials are describing a broader system in which ships would pay for services associated with transiting the waterway, everything from navigation assistance to environmental protection, maritime safety, security coordination and insurance.
But while the details remain vague, the broader objective is becoming increasingly clear.
Iran isn't interested in just re-opening the Strait of Hormuz after the recent conflict. It wants a permanent role in deciding how the Strait is managed going forward. And that may be the most significant consequence of this conflict. The agreement that ended the fighting restored toll-free passage, or at least was supposed to restore toll-free passage through the Strait of Hormuz for an initial 60-day period, while Iran works to clear mines and re-open the shipping lanes. Traffic has begun to recover. Insurance rates are falling and commercial vessels are slowly transiting. But from Tehran's perspective, the war changed something far more important than just shipping patterns. For decades, the international community largely operated under the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz would remain open under the international standard of freedom of navigation. The recent conflict demonstrated that Iran possesses the ability, whether temporarily or for an extended period, to disrupt one of the world's most strategically important maritime choke points. In other words, Tehran believes it's proven something, and now it wants that new reality reflected in whatever comes next. Perhaps the clearest indication came from Iran's chief negotiator, Mohammed Bakr Ghalibov, who declared this week that management of the Strait will never return to the way it was before, at least in his opinion. That single sentence may be the real headline here. It's about Iran attempting to convert wartime leverage into long-term political and economic benefit.
We're already seeing small examples of what that could look like. Iran has reportedly established an insurance company that it says vessels should use when transiting the Strait. Ships are also being instructed to register their transit plans in advance and remain within designated shipping routes identified by Iranian authorities. Taken together, they assault points toward a future in which Iran exercises a much greater role in overseeing traffic through a critical oil corridor. To justify that approach, Iranian officials have pointed to other international waterways. One that's frequently cited is Turkey's control over the Dardanelles, where an international treaty allows Ankara to collect certain fees for services provided to commercial shipping. Iranian officials have suggested that a similar model could eventually emerge in the Strait of Hormuz with 12 states sharing responsibility and revenue for managing the Strait.
But that's where Iran's ambitions begin running into reality. Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected the proposal during a trip to the Middle East this week, arguing that allowing countries to charge for passage through international waterways would create a dangerous precedent. He also noted that America's golf partners have shown little interest in supporting such a system.