It took not even 24 hours for the tollbooth on the Strait of Hormuz to snap shut. Israel, whose desires to act as a saboteur and trap the United States into the war it desperately wanted us to conduct couldn’t be more obvious, spent Wednesday pounding central Beirut with airstrikes, hitting 100 targets in ten minutes, with at least 112 dead. Iran and the U.S. have very different conceptions of whether Lebanon counts as part of the nascent cease-fire. After Donald Trump confirmed that in his view Israel and Lebanon are in a “separate skirmish,” which conflicts with the view of Pakistan, the country that mediated the dispute, Iran showed its displeasure by closing the strait to oil tankers, and now the Revolutionary Guard Corps has threatened military action against “aggressors in the region” (Israel) if the Lebanon attacks continue.

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Meanwhile, at least five Gulf states have seen more attacks despite the alleged end to hostilities. A drone hit a major Saudi oil pipeline, really the only way the country can bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian ten-point plan that was the basis for the stand-down differs from what Trump claims is the Iranian ten-point plan, and I’m trying to figure out who is less trustworthy.

To put this atop the heights of ridiculousness, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in the space of a few minutes in Wednesday’s briefing that it would be “false” to say that the strait was closed, and also that the strait must be opened “immediately.” So the cease-fire is working in every way except ceasing the fire, and as a prelude to a final agreement it hasn’t even gotten around to agreeing on the terms. Other than that, things are peachy.

Every other country or rogue actor in this position will wonder why they don’t just go ahead and do the same thing.

In such a fraught moment, casting our eyes forward to the aftermath may seem premature. But no matter whether hostilities resume or not, the future for the Middle East and the global economy is precisely the same as I said last week: Iran has operational control of the Strait of Hormuz. And this Wall Street Journal quote from a bank analyst sums it up: “This has been the economic catastrophe that everybody could have predicted, that everybody was predicting, but Trump did it anyway.”

International maritime law prohibits payments for passage on a natural waterway, but operational control is bigger than a tollbooth. A toll, however “illegal,” is just a cost of doing business that gets folded into the overall product. That toll is something like $1 per barrel of oil, paid in Chinese yuan or crypto. (Oman, which is on the other side of the strait, would split the fees with Iran, making them perhaps the biggest winner in this whole thing.)

Another dollar on each barrel is not going to crash the global economy, though the total cost will be a huge windfall for Iran. But the thing about a tollbooth is the gate can go up or down, as we’ve already seen hours after the non-cease-fire cease-fire. If Iran is attacked or even mildly offended, they can shut the gate. If Iran decides a country isn’t operating in their interests and a ship either bears that country’s flag or has goods destined for that location, they can shut the gate. If Iran’s oil exports aren’t doing well enough and they don’t want to compete with an OPEC rival, maybe they shut the gate.

There are also a ton of mines in the harbor around the strait that dissuaded vessels from passing even when it was allegedly open. The Iranians are threatening missile attacks on any ship that tries to go on their own. And a spokesperson for Iran’s exporters union told the Financial Times that they would have to inspect each ship to deter guns or other weapons from traversing. That reduces overall throughput in the strait and could prompt some tanker captains to decide that the trip isn’t worth it at all. Even at best, the expectation is 10 to 15 ships a day getting through, and apparently four ships made it on Wednesday before the closure, the lowest number this month. The usual daily traffic on the waterway is 138 vessels.

This is the reason that oil companies are so angry. It’s not that they fear paying a buck a barrel. It’s the insurance they will have to place on any ship within sniffing distance of the Persian Gulf. It’s the volatility and uncertainty attached to getting their products where they need to go. It’s the knock-on effects that go beyond oil and gas, for petrochemicals derived from hydrocarbons, from helium, from aluminum and more. It’s the legal fees for avoiding penalties for paying a sanctioned country, both from the U.S. and Europe.

And even more than all of that, it’s the precedent set. The world is deciding to be tolerant of a country with the good fortune of existing near a global shipping lane to hijack it. Every other country or rogue actor in this position—and there are many—will wonder why they don’t just go ahead and do the same thing. After all, it’s just a buck a barrel, right? They’ll surely grumble but pay the toll. Maybe it starts with the Houthis on the other end of the Gulf. Maybe Singapore decides to monetize the Strait of Malacca. Maybe Turkey puts a gate on top of the entryway to the Mediterranean and the dividing line between Asia and Europe. Every one of the costs associated with the Hormuz tollbooth will be replicated elsewhere.

The Opening of Trump’s Box

The world’s ocean shipping routes will gradually take on the character of the New Jersey Turnpike. Maybe some entrepreneur will add a crypto-fueled E-ZPass to oil tankers and container ships so they won’t even have to stop. And the U.S., which has been knocking out fishermen in the Caribbean mainly for existing, is in no position to criticize. Considering that the president built a bunch of casinos in Atlantic City that could only be reached by paying tolls, that could be something he gets behind: He’s already dreamed out loud of a “joint venture” where he gets a cut of the pirate’s booty.

It’s appalling that political leaders are in the position of having to operate with kid gloves on this war, so as not to upset the angry dad in the White House so much that he changes his mind on wiping out an entire civilization. Silence in the face of reality is completely untenable. Donald Trump’s epic fuckup has handed over control of a formerly open waterway, costing everyone who buys really anything a permanent tax. That’s on top of the needless and ongoing death and destruction on all sides, depletion of treasure and munitions—and we’re only at the beginning.

There are no deals available to forestall any of this; everybody now knows that Iran has control of the strait whether it’s put into formal language or explicitly prohibited. And despite this being the third major supply shock in six years, behind COVID and the Ukraine war, there has been only the tiniest of efforts to eliminate the hidden risk with our long, intermediated global supply chains that now have been permanently transformed.

Anyone desiring peace wants to see the cease-fire hold against all evidence. But the die is really cast, and we’re in permanently new territory in just a matter of weeks.

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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90.