President Donald Trump has been trolled by a retired U.S. Navy admiral over plans to line the Iranian regime’s pockets.
Trump has floated the idea of teaming up with Iran to set up tolls on the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway reopened under Trump’s flimsy ceasefire. He told ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl about the “joint venture.”
“We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it—also securing it from lots of other people,” Trump reportedly told Karl. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
But CNN senior military analyst and former NATO supreme allied commander James Stavridis took the news as an opportunity to take a swipe at the president, labeling the bizarre plan the “Aya Toll Booth.”
Stavridis shared a mock-up movie poster on X, with the title: ‘Let me get this Strait. The Aya Toll Booth.’
The toll booth gag riffs on Trump’s opportunistic plans for the Strait and the clerical title “Ayatollah,” held by the supreme leader of Iran.
Tehran has demanded that shipping companies pay transit tolls in digital currency for tankers moving through the Strait. Reports suggest that Iran has set the toll at $1 per barrel of oil.
Stavridis, a four-star admiral who served in the Navy for 37 years, indicated that he isn’t sold on Trump’s insistence that the strategic waterway is now open. Writing in a separate X post, he said: “All eyes now shift to the Strait of Hormuz, whether or not it truly is open to mariners. Leaving Iran in any kind of control of the Strait is illegal under international law and highly problematic geopolitically.
“Three things I am watching as I monitor the cease-fire: One, is the Strait actually open? Two, is there a real follow on negotiation concerning the nuclear material? Three, where are U.S. ground troops, both Marines and paratroopers, headed?”
The White House, meanwhile, was forced to walk back on Trump’s rambling to ABC’s Jonathan Karl.
No other U.S. official has indicated that such a plan is under discussion, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was keen to clear the matter up during a press conference on Wednesday.
“It’s something that the president has floated, but the immediate priority of the president is the reopening of the strait without any limitations, whether in the form of tolls or otherwise,” Leavitt said.
