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President Donald Trump shocked Gulf allies and many of his own aides with his plans to impose a toll on the Strait of Hormuz, touching off an international scramble to convince him to reverse course on his demand, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The abrupt announcement on Monday came despite months of warnings from Trump's own advisers not to pursue the idea, for fear it would undermine the US' own war aims - as well as validate Iran's purported plans to charge fees in the strait, which the administration repeatedly characterized as illegal.
But as he surveyed the intensifying struggle over the strait that had drawn the US back into full-fledged war, a frustrated Trump pressed ahead anyway.
The surprise directive sparked a 24-hour sprint within the administration and across the Middle East to decode the specifics of a proposal that Trump had seemingly come up with on the spot. And while he reversed his plans on Tuesday, the episode further underscored the freewheeling, transactional nature of Trump's approach to foreign policy, even in the midst of a prolonged war that he has no clear idea how to bring to an end.
Inside the White House on Monday, aides rushed to flesh out the logistic for creating such an unprecedented tolling system, including determining who would pay the fees and how they would be collected. Many officials and outside analysts initially assumed shippers would foot the bill, but the effort was further complicated by another Trump declaration later on Monday that US allies in the Gulf would be paying instead.