The Strait of Hormuz has become a flash point in the U.S.-Israeli war with the Islamic Republic. The narrow strait through which oil tankers must pass to get into or out of the Persian Gulf has been closed to most shipping by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps since hostilities began. The United States has a clear interest in seizing control of the strait and a strategic interest in maintaining control thereafter.
The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most critical maritime chokepoint. It connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Its significance is difficult to overstate. Nearly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum liquids flow through it.
In ancient times, it was a trade route for silk and spices, but it has become a lynchpin in the modern economy, part of the supply chain for everything from agriculture to the semiconductor industry.
Control of the strait can have a decisive impact on the fate of nations far from its shores. The Islamic Republic knows this and exploits it, but it should not be allowed to do so. Apart from anything else, it is not the only sovereign nation with a shoreline on the strait, and the international community, led by the U.S., must stop it from behaving as though it were.
Even before the war began, Tehran periodically threatened to tighten its grip into a chokehold, and it conducted military exercises that simulated the strait’s closure. Now those exercises have given way to the real thing.
Iran has reportedly fired on vessels being damaged as they enter the strait. The Revolutionary Guard Corps has said any vessel that wants passage “must obtain permission from Iran.” Ships linked to “aggressors,” which is essentially anyone other than China or the illegal ghost fleet of tankers, will be denied access. This is extortion, which is characteristic of the Islamic Republic and its gangster apparatchiks.
It also testifies to an important truth that the free world must not allow an authoritarian state to control the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. and its allies have long had plans available to take the strait, and are likely “dusting them off” as retired U.S. Navy Admiral Mark Montgomery, a senior director for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recently noted. On March 10, the U.S. military sank 16 mine-laying ships near the strait and President Donald Trump warned that he will strike “20 times harder” if Iran halts oil flows.
The Guard isn’t likely to listen. The Corps feels it has little to lose. The Guards are inseparable from the regime that created them. They are highly ideological and deeply corrupt, and they are at the center of the military campaign. With their actions, Iran is managing to export even more oil now than it did before the war.
Yet, the U.S. and Israeli militaries outmatch the Guard, particularly now that the Corps’ morale and means are being smashed. A war of attrition, particularly a naval war of attrition, doesn’t favor the Guard.
The U.S. should prepare to hold the strait once crops’ ships have been sunk. The U.S. has preserved freedom of navigation of the high seas, which has been essential to decades of comparative peace and global stability. Rival powers, such as Iran’s allies, Russia and China, cannot be trusted with the task.
By taking control of the strait and holding it, presumably in partnership with other friendly nations that border the Gulf, the U.S. would gain substantial leverage over Moscow and Beijing. China, a net energy importer, relies more on what flows through the strait than the U.S. does.
Controlling the Strait of Hormuz would have domestic benefits, too, as it would lower the price of gasoline and all other goods that rely on energy supplies. Taking the strait could be viewed as an acceptable outcome of the war.
Such an arrangement would spark ire both from critics abroad and partisans at home. The U.N. Security Council wouldn’t like it, but the international body has betrayed its charter by doing nothing to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
DOMESTIC ENERGY DOMINANCE MAKES US SAFER
With military bases at each end of the strait, the U.S. is in a position to be assertive over the strait, and could work especially with neighboring Oman to secure international traffic through these vital waters. Iran has been at war with the U.S. for 47 years, which is sufficient reason and justification for such a bold U.S. move.
In a complex and increasingly dangerous world, the Strait of Hormuz is best kept under American control and not subject to the whims of its authoritarian opponents.