Perhaps realizing that he had said it big, even if in truth no more than on other occasions, Donald Trump has made a U-turn on the application announced yesterday of a 20% tax on the value of goods carried by ships which, under the protection of U.S. naval and air forces, will cross the Strait of Hormuz ( of 13 July 2026). Today, on his social Truth, which has long seemed to having lost along the way its alleged epistemic mission, the The American president stated that, referring to Hormuz, "the Oil flows like never before thanks to the extraordinary power of the United States Armed Forces" and that "the Strait of Hormuz is open to all naval traffic, for example with the exception of the Iranian one, and this is because of their leadership lying, violent and evil, which is leading them on the path of total destruction".

Confirming that he had given orders to the US Central Command to reinstate the blockade of ships arriving and departing from ports Iranians, or transporting goods of Iranian origin, Trump has announced that "based on very productive conversations with the leaders of the Middle East, I decided to replace the tax of 20% U.S. rebate with trade agreements and investment that the various Gulf States will make in the United".

Evidently to compensate for any disappointment on earth for the non-application of the tax, Trump has underlined that "these investments will be enormous but, at the same time, at the same time extraordinarily advantageous for them and for their future. As everyone knows - he was keen to point out - we have the most significant U.S. dollar investments of any other country in history, but these new investments will make it this figure even higher and we will see factories, plants and equipment to flow into the U.S. like never before, creating more millions of good-paying American jobs! America is winning again, winning like never before. I days when Iran was killing hundreds of thousands of people, including 52,000 protesters, have ended up and, above all, Iran will not have never a nuclear weapon!"

All this, however, has not so far reduced the risks that ships run through the Strait of Hormuz, as confirmed by the new attack suffered by a tanker. Today the British United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) has announced that it has received report of an accident that occurred 13 nautical miles away southeast of Limah, Oman, where a tanker was hit by a missile while it was leaving the Persian Gulf along the southern route that passes through Hormuz. The ship is the chemical/product tanker Stolt Magnesium of 26 thousand Tons deadweight, Liberian flagged and owned of the Stolt Tankers that the Dutch company itself has disclosed having been hit by a device that caused a fire in the engine room. Stolt Tankers specified that the crew of the ship did not suffer any injuries.

Bruno Bellio