Iran is considering charging transit fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a lawmaker said on Thursday, as officials in Tehran stepped up rhetoric over the strategic waterway after this week’s attacks on energy sites in the Persian Gulf.
Somayeh Rafiei said lawmakers are pursuing a bill under which countries using the strait for shipping, energy transit and food supplies would be required to pay tolls and taxes to Iran, framing it as compensation for providing security along the route.
“In the event that the Strait of Hormuz is used as a secure route for ship traffic, energy transit and food supply, countries will be required to pay tolls and taxes to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Rafiei said.
She also said countries should pay what she described as a security tax in return for Iran maintaining regional security.
The proposal came as senior Iranian officials suggested the war could be used to redefine Tehran’s position in the waterway after the conflict ends.
Mohammad Mokhber said one of the most important opportunities created by the war was the possibility of reshaping Iran’s role in the Strait of Hormuz.
“After the imposed war, by defining a new regime for the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will move from being under sanctions to a powerful position in the region and the world,” Mokhber said.
He added: “By using the strategic position of the Strait of Hormuz, we can sanction them and not allow their ships to pass through this waterway.”
The comments followed a sharp escalation earlier this week when Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, one of the country’s most important energy sites, in an attack that pushed oil and gas prices higher.
Iran retaliated by targeting energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf, including strikes on facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, widening concerns that the conflict could spread further across the region’s oil and gas network.
That escalation also triggered a stronger response from Arab states. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said pressure from Iran would “backfire politically and morally” and added that Riyadh reserved the right to take military action if needed.
That was the frame Khatib laid out in a long interview published on Ali Khamenei’s website during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. It became more than rhetoric. It became a governing logic that collapsed protest, foreign media, activism and espionage into one threat map.
Khatib’s career made him unusually suited to that task.
Born in 1961 and trained in Qom, he rose through the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence world, later ran the intelligence office in Qom, moved into the Supreme Leader’s protection orbit and then headed the judiciary’s protection and intelligence apparatus.
By the time Ebrahim Raisi made him intelligence minister in 2021, Khatib had passed through nearly every institution that mattered in the Islamic Republic’s coercive core: the Guards, the judiciary and the Supreme Leader’s household.
His retention in 2024 confirmed that his authority rested less on party politics than on trust from the system above elected government.
Under Khatib, the state increasingly treated social unrest as proof of foreign infiltration.
Protesters were not simply angry citizens. They were portrayed as nodes in an enemy network. Foreign-based Persian media were not just broadcasters. They were recast as operational arms of hostile states.
That logic also hardened into law.
Under his watch, the state broadened the definition of espionage and hostile collaboration, making it easier to turn contact, information-sharing, media work and loosely defined cooperation with enemy states or affiliated groups into national-security crimes.
The point was not only to punish spies. It was to widen the category of who could be treated like one.
The United States designated Khatib twice in September 2022, reflecting the breadth of his role across both overseas operations and domestic repression.
The Treasury first sanctioned him and the Intelligence Ministry over malicious cyber activity, including the disruption of Albanian government systems.
Later that month, it sanctioned him again, saying the ministry under his leadership had targeted human rights defenders, women’s rights activists, journalists, filmmakers and religious minorities, and had subjected detainees to torture in secret detention centers.
Years of the gallows
The intelligence ministry did not sign every death sentence. But the execution surge is still part of the meaning of Khatib’s tenure, because it formed the climate in which his security doctrine operated.
In the four full calendar years after he took office, Iran carried out at least 4,000 executions: about 580 in 2022, 830 in 2023, 975 in 2024 and 1,900 in 2025.
Those numbers belong formally to the judiciary and the prison system.
Politically, though, they sit inside the same larger story: a state that answered dissent, insecurity and social fracture with a heavier reliance on coercion, exemplary punishment and fear.
Operations beyond Iran
Khatib was also important beyond Iran’s borders. The ministry he led was accused by Western governments of directing cyber operations, targeting dissidents abroad and helping run the wider machinery of transnational repression.
His significance, though, was not that he was publicly tied to every individual plot.
It was that he sat atop a ministry that linked classic espionage, cyber activity, surveillance of exiles and operational cooperation with Iran’s other security arms.
In that sense he was less a field commander than a system manager, overseeing one part of Iran’s long war against opponents at home and abroad.
The glue
That coordinating role may be the most revealing part of his legacy.
Iran’s intelligence world is fragmented. The Intelligence Ministry, the IRGC Intelligence Organization, the judiciary and the Leader’s office all have their own stakes, rivalries and chains of command.
Khatib’s value was that he could move across those worlds.
He came from the Guards’ intelligence culture, served in the Leader’s protection orbit, worked closely with the judiciary and then ran the ministry that was supposed to give the system a more unified picture of the threat environment.
After the 2022 uprising, that became even more important.
The Islamic Republic needed its rival security organs to act less like competing fiefdoms and more like a single architecture.
Khatib helped provide that common language, one in which protest, activism, foreign media, exile politics, sabotage and espionage could all be placed on the same continuum of danger.
That is why Khatib mattered. He mattered because he helped normalize a broader idea: that almost any challenge to the Islamic Republic could be reclassified as infiltration.
In the end, that was his real achievement for the system he served. He helped make dissent legible as intelligence warfare.
Videos sent to Iran International showed crowds gathering in Tehran, Karaj, Shiraz, Mashhad and other cities, lighting fires, dancing and chanting slogans, including “Javid Shah,” in apparent response to calls by exiled prince Reza Pahlavi to mark the pre-Islamic festival despite restrictions.
In several locations, including Chitgar in western Tehran and parts of Karaj, security forces were seen attempting to disperse gatherings, with footage showing police vehicles approaching crowds.
But the celebrations persisted, with people singing patriotic songs such as “Ey Iran” and setting off fireworks in residential neighborhoods and public spaces.
Chaharshanbe Suri, traditionally held on the eve of last Wednesday of the Iranian calendar year, has long been viewed with suspicion by the Islamic Republic.
In recent years it has increasingly become a flashpoint for anti-government expression, particularly during periods of unrest.
This year’s celebrations unfolded against the backdrop of ongoing conflict and heightened security pressure, with reports of surveillance and efforts by authorities to deter gatherings.
Israeli support
“An unprecedented event took place last night, as Israeli drones targeted Basij and police patrols attempting to approach celebration sites,” an Israeli official told Iran International.
“For the first time, the people of Iran benefited from active support that paralyzed the repression apparatus and effectively provided an ‘air umbrella’ for the crowds,” the official said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier signaled support, saying in a video message that Israeli forces were targeting what he described as “terrorist operatives” to enable Iranians to celebrate.
“Our aircraft are striking terrorist elements in city squares and intersections to allow the brave people of Iran to celebrate the fire festival,” he said. “Celebrate. Happy Nowruz. We are watching from above.”