President Donald Trump’s Iran war campaign is increasingly hinging on a waterway of which most Americans have never heard.
The Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and, at its narrowest, is 24 miles wide, is considered the world’s most important maritime chokepoint because about 20 to 21 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products pass through it every day, supplying approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil consumption.
But Iran’s attacks on ships using the strait that are not its own have stopped that supply of oil, even fertilizer, upending those and other markets around the world.
“There is no victory lap to be had that does not go through the Strait of Hormuz, which is the priority mission,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies Iran program senior director Behnam Ben Taleblu told the Washington Examiner. “Before we discuss what to do after is the fact that it is ‘closed’ today and that means that it will take a U.S. military mission to open it.”
Taleblu underscored how the importance of the Strait of Hormuz has only escalated since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s because of the Iranian regime’s asymmetric military and maritime strategies, including fast-attack water craft, drones, and mines.
A U.S. mission in the Strait of Hormuz would likely include military targeting of Iran’s coastal defense assets, ports, and jetties for “the speed boats and the smaller vessels that lay mines,” Taleblu added.
Apparently understanding the stakes, Trump has been criticizing allies for their lack of support with the Strait of Hormuz after spending last weekend trying to create a coalition to help him secure the waterway.
Trump on Wednesday took to social media to “wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it… be responsible for” the Strait of Hormuz.
“That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!!” he wrote.
American Enterprise Institute foreign and defense policy senior fellow Danielle Pletka agreed with Trump’s more aggressive strategy regarding the Strait of Hormuz.
“Our allies’ failure to help us is an outrage,” Pletka told the Washington Examiner. “They bleat at us about Ukraine, which is on their doorstep, while Iran has killed more Americans – and Europeans – over the last half century than almost any other nation. And yet, these so-called allies can’t see past their derangement to protect either the free world or their own economic interests.”
She said, “It’s a disastrous mistake on their part and plays directly into the hands of people who don’t believe in the importance of our alliances.”
For the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Taleblu, the resistance of allies to Trump’s strategy in the Strait of Hormuz is an example of where “style has a substance of its own.”
That is because “there’s countries that have previously supported maritime security initiatives in that region that are not supporting this one,” from the European Union to Australia, due to different priorities and capabilities, despite “philosophically” being for free maritime commerce, according to Taleblu.
“It’s going to be unlikely in an era when many of our allies are taxed to the max with challenges, for example, on the European continent and in Asia, that they might be able to do this,” he said.
At the same time, Taleblu contended there could be opportunities with Japan, for one, because Japan is “still reliant on Persian Gulf energy.”
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will be at the White House on Thursday for meetings, a visit on Trump’s agenda before the start of the Iran war.
“The interesting thing here to note is that, rather than have a tiff with Europe, there could be a real division of labor vis-a-vis Europe,” Taleblu said.
For example, Europe could lead the world’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the U.S. could do the same in the Middle East, Taleblu continued.
“It’s an open question as to what Europe can meaningfully contribute to this mission,” he said. “You would want regional countries to support it, and that’s why it’s big news that the [United Arab Emirates] would indeed be stepping up to support this.”
The UAE this week indicated it could support the U.S. with the Strait of Hormuz, as has France, though President Emmanuel Macron has also indicated France is unlikely to do so until the situation is “calmer.”
Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior adviser Richard Goldberg conveyed confidence that the situation surrounding the Strait of Hormuz would be, in Macron’s words, “calmer” soon.
“It’s just a matter of time for the military objectives to be achieved and assets to be redirected to the escort mission,” Goldberg, who was previously a White House National Energy Dominance Council senior counselor and the White House National Security Council’s director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction, told the Washington Examiner. “At that point, the Iranian threat will be so reduced alongside a surge in U.S. and hopefully allied defense and the availability of insurance, tankers will start moving.”
But Goldberg was cognizant of the “strategic tensions” regarding the Strait of Hormuz because the U.S. “no longer depends on the Arabian Gulf for energy, but still has to respond to the price impacts for traded commodities.”
“European and Asian democracies, on the other hand, are facing both supply and price impacts, but enjoy a free-rider status in the United States doing the heavy lifting to restore tanker flow,” Goldberg said.
“China’s role in all of this is also filled with contradictions. China depends on the Strait of Hormuz for half its imported oil, yet it is also the chief enabler of Iran’s military capability to threaten the strait and impede its own imports,” Goldberg continued. “And this tension is important to evaluating what China’s future role might be in the region because the real issue is whether the U.S. Navy will have the undeterred ability to cut off Beijing’s oil supply in a wartime scenario.”
Mindful of the economic and, as a result, political importance of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump on Wednesday suspended the Jones Act, a law that requires goods to be transported between domestic ports on U.S. ships, for two months as the national average cost for a gallon of regular gas rose to more than $3.84 compared to the $2.98 average before the start of the war.
TRUMP’S NATO COMPLAINTS OVER IRAN WAR UNDERSCORE DISTASTE FOR MULTILATERALISM
Trump earlier this week criticized NATO allies, specifically the United Kingdom, and the likes of Japan, Australia, and South Korea, for not supporting the U.S. with the Strait of Hormuz before telling them he no longer needed their help.
“I’ve long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us,” he told reporters. “This was a great test because we don’t need them, but they should have been there.”
