U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has touched down in Abu Dhabi, and the damage control tour is officially underway. Fresh off the plane from the G7 summit, Rubio is visiting the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain to do some serious hand-holding. His mission? Convince our furious Gulf allies that the administration’s shiny new 60-day ceasefire deal with Iran isn’t the total paper tiger it looks like, and that Tehran won’t immediately start acting up once the ink dries.

At the center of the drama is the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most stressful maritime bottleneck. Iran has been insisting they have every right to slap tolls and "maritime service" fees on ships passing through their backyard. Rubio tried to shut that down immediately upon arrival on Tuesday, dropping some classic international law lecturing. "It’s an international waterway," Rubio told reporters. "No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law... and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here."

But here’s the catch: the actual ceasefire text signed last week tells a completely different story. Sure, it guarantees 60 days of toll-free shipping, but after that? The deal says Iran and Oman get to sit down and discuss the "future administration and maritime services" of the strait, with a nice little nod to the "sovereign rights of coastal states." Translation: the U.S. basically left the back door wide open for Iran to start taxing the global supply chain the second the 60 days run out. Rubio is out here playing the "nothing to see here" card, claiming he doesn't think they have anyone to convince, but our allies aren't buying the cope.

Unsurprisingly, the Gulf is totally split on this "peace in our time" special. While Qatar—who helped mediate the whole mess—is happy, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain are absolutely livid. They’re looking at the massive bags of frozen assets the U.S. just agreed to unfreeze for Iran and asking the obvious question: why are we funding the regime's military upgrade? The U.S. allies want absolute, written-in-stone clarity that no tolls will ever be charged, and they want Iran's ballistic missile program shut down.

Good luck with that. On Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian basically told the U.S. and its allies to pound sand. Pezeshkian declared that Iran’s ballistic missiles will "never" be part of any future agreement, framing them as a totally non-negotiable defense system against Israel. So while Vance is busy hailing these peace talks as a massive win back home, the actual regime we're negotiating with is making it clear they aren't giving up a single rocket.