Can Trump’s ‘gun diplomacy’ stop Iran from blocking oil flows? Almost impossible, experts say
With jagged cliffs rising out of the Arabian Sea, the Strait of Hormuz is impressive for its landscape – and these days, its emptiness. The massive highway, which normally handles more than 100 oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers from around the world every day, has never had more than a handful of traffic in a week.
They are the brave ones, who have the courage to run these front lines where the US and Iranian naval forces are facing each other. At least 14 commercial ships have suffered some form of violence incidentleaving at least eight sailors dead.
Oil and gas facilities were also hit. Smoke still rises from burning tanks at Oman’s Port of Salah.
Iran, which controls one side of the narrow waterway, has declared it closed, labeling any ship headed for the US, Israel or their “hostile allies” as a “legitimate target.”
A fifth of the world’s oil and LNG passes through the Strait of Hormuz, leaving customers around the world facing shortages and rising prices due to the blockade. Iran has predicted that oil will exceed $200 US a barrel, double its current levels and well above pre-war levels of $72.
This, however record intervention from the International Energy Agency, trying to soften the blow. The IEA, made up of major oil-using countries, recommended the release of 400 million barrels from the world’s strategic reserves.
“The United States absolutely blew this,” said Sal Mercogliano, a naval historian and naval expert at Campbell University in North Carolina. “How they didn’t know this was going to happen is really strange … they should have been prepared.”
US President Donald Trump has dismissed the crisis as temporary, and the risk is manageable. He says he told the oil companies that they “must” continue to use the sea lanes, give them away better insurance. He promised to look after Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz by “taking it,” if necessary.
Trump is counting on his troops — “the most powerful military in the world” — to win. He has already bragged about destroying all of Iran’s military, including 28 minesweepers, and that the US “just took out almost all of its mines,” without providing evidence.
“It’s all a gunfight,” Mercogliano said, recalling colonial tyranny from the 1800s.
Maritime guerilla warfare
The Strait of Hormuz is only 60 meters at its shallowest, and 33 kilometers at its narrowest, with shipping lanes no more than two kilometers wide.
Naval experts such as Mark Norman, a retired vice admiral of the Canadian navy and former deputy chief of the Canadian defense staff, are skeptical that the US would once again halt shipping to the area.
“It would be great to go in there and basically get the hell out of control and regulation, infrastructure, leadership, military and industrial power, and so on,” he said. “But that’s not a guarantee of anything.”
The challenge comes in the form of unequal warfare, experts say.
The US is fighting with a limited number of large, expensive ships – two groups of aircraft carriers and additional destroyers and submarines.
Iran’s traditional navy suffered heavy losses The Strait of Hormuz and, on the other hand, the Indian Ocean. But some Iranian Revolutionary Guard weapons are “a very serious threat to shipping,” said Justin Crump of Sybilline, a British intelligence expert.
He lists fast, well-armed boats and anti-ship missiles, which have been fired from the USS Abraham Lincoln, an American aircraft carrier.
Three cargo ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz are reported to have been hit by projectiles. One of the strikes, on a bulk carrier flagged off Thailand, led to a fire and forced most of its crew to abandon ship.
Norman calls Iran’s way of guerrilla warfare at sea.
Mines remain the most dangerous weapon in Iran’s arsenal, he says, and are the most likely threat to commercial and US military vessels.
He says many of them could have been placed in the Strait of Hormuz long before the current conflict broke out, set to explode when some type of ship is detected or launched remotely.
Mines are relatively cheap yet can damage millions or millions of warships, if they manage to sink them.
Dangers of escorting tanks
In 1988, the frigate USS Samuel Roberts hit an Iranian mine in the Persian Gulf. It is said that the mine cost US$1,500 to make, and the damage to the ship cost US$96 million to repair.
That’s the risk of having large US warships such as destroyers escorting tanks into port, as Trump promised — and his navy. rejected as too dangerous at the moment. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the deployment could begin by the end of March.
Destroyers have no special ability to clear mines and can be as vulnerable to them as the merchant ships they protect.
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If a ship hits a mine in the strait – or is sunk by a missile – it can close the waterway for days or weeks.
“It really doesn’t take much to do damage in very thick water like this,” said Norman.
The Houthi rebels, an Iranian-backed terrorist group based in Yemen, pose a similar threat to limited access to the Red Sea, launching naval attacks from 2023 to 2025 and threatening commercial vessels. It was protesting the Israeli invasion of Gaza.
The US and other countries have launched military action against the Houthis, including airstrikes on bases and airports in Yemen. But the only solution was a deal negotiated between the Houthis and the Americans last May, which ended the offensive.
Experts like Mercogliano say it may take a ceasefire and an agreement between Iran and the US to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
“Without placing troops on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz and making sure that you are able to stop drones and mine attacks, I don’t see a military solution,” he said.
