Free passage is fading: Europe needs a navy

Since January 2025 it was clear that US disengagement could eventually leave Europe’s vital sea lanes less safe. Iran has transformed the Strait of Hormuz into a wartime toll road, charging vessels up to $2 million per passage while the US Navy is executing something more akin to a maritime quarantine in the Arabian Sea.

The Houthis are now discussing opening their own toll booth at the Bab el-Mandeb, which would threaten Saudi Arabia’s last viable oil export route through the Red Sea. And Indonesia’s finance minister, inspired by Tehran’s example, has floated the idea of levying similar charges on shipping through the Strait of Malacca; one of the world’s busiest trade arteries, carrying roughly 40% of global commerce. 

He may have been joking, but the fact that a G20 finance minister reached for that idea at all tells us everything about where we are today. The rules-based maritime order is not something which can collapse all at once, but it could erode one chokepoint at a time as new precedents are set. 

Iran has just set the first one: the first permanent sovereign charge on an international strait in modern maritime history. If it endures, other coastal states with geographic leverage may draw the same conclusion that the oceans are not a commons to be maintained but an asset to be monetised. 

What makes this more than a revenue story is the political discrimination built into Iran’s system. Tehran has granted preferential passage to China, Russia, India, Iraq, and Pakistan. This is not a toll in any neutral commercial sense but a mechanism for rewarding allies and punishing adversaries; a tool of economic coercion dressed up as maritime governance.  

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which 168 states have ratified, explicitly prohibits coastal states from hampering transit passage or charging fees for it. But Iran never ratified UNCLOS, and the international community’s response has so far amounted to outrage without enforcement. The IMO can issue warnings, but someone must be willing to enforce them. 

Europe is not a spectator in this unravelling. European nations draw 12–14% of their LNG from Qatar, routed through the Strait of Hormuz.  The EU’s supply chains connect to Asian manufacturing bases through the Straits of Malacca.  European energy security depends on Red Sea passage, which the Houthis are actively threatening. 

The United States Navy, which has historically enforced freedom of navigation globally, has not been able to contest Iran’s toll regime in the critical early weeks. The threat environment in those narrow waters, dense with mines, drones, and missiles, is too costly and constricted for surface vessels without adequate preparation. So, the enforcement vacuum is real. 

The strategic reality Europe must now absorb is that free movement of goods, energy, and military power across the world’s oceans is no longer guaranteed by someone else. It never should have been. 

The deeper damage is to predictability – upon which markets and alliances depend. Shipping costs and insurance premiums spike while supply chains fragment. But the structural disruption is the precedent itself. Indonesia’s proposal and Houthi threats echo Iran’s model and there may soon be more. Each will be louder than the last if norms are not actively defended. 

The case for a European blue-water navy has therefore moved from strategic ambition to an operational necessity. What that means in this case deserves to be stated bluntly. 

It means escort and deterrence capacity. The lesson of the 1980s Tanker War is directly applicable since US Navy escort operations changed Iran’s calculus during that crisis. Europe needs the capacity to do this independently as a genuine application of hard power.  This requires naval aviation, mine countermeasures, submarine screening, and sustained replenishment at sea.

France and the United Kingdom have the nucleus of this capability in their coordinated carrier deployments. NATO’s standing maritime groups, mine-countermining groups, and the EU’s coordinated maritime presence can generate such a capability as well. What must follow is turning these into a deterrent force, whether it be part of the European pillar of NATO or under an EU flag. 

Legal arguments alone do not enforce themselves. European vessels visibly operating in contested waters and cooperating with strait defenders like Singapore and Malaysia – who have been firm on UNCLOS – makes a political statement that no communiqué can replicate.  No policy speaks louder than a hard power presence.  

The ReArm EU plan rightly focuses on land forces and air defence. But European strategic autonomy is an illusion if the raw materials, components, and energy that feed Europe’s economy cannot reliably move through sea lanes.  

None of this is fast or cheap. But the alternative of waiting for someone else to defend the global commons is no longer a viable option.