MANAMA: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday warned that Iranian tolls on ships passing the Strait of Hormuz would spread to other waterways, risking “total chaos.”
“International waterways do not belong to any nation state. This is a foundational principle in the world today, without which the world would be in total chaos,” he told a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Bahrain.
“If in fact we accepted that you can charge money to use an international waterway because it happens to be near your territorial space, well then this will spread throughout the world like a contagion.”
Rubio, on his first regional tour since the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to end the Middle East war, said the US wants a peace deal but not “at any price.”
“While we want a deal, we don’t want a deal at any price,” he said. “We want a deal that’s good, we want a deal that’s real, we want a deal that’s verifiable, and we want a deal that’s adhered to.”
