Forget regime change, a nuclear deal and the rest of America’s ever-changing objectives in Iran. With the war now in its third week, it may seem as if Donald Trump’s list of goals has been whittled down to just one: control of the Strait of Hormuz, the most vital passageway for the world’s energy supply.
That is not strictly true, of course. America and Israel continue to bomb hundreds of targets across Iran, many of which have nothing to do with the strait. According to HRANA, a rights group based in Washington at least 2400 people have been killed, including more than 1300 civilians, since the start of the war. Iran is still launching scores of missiles and drones each day at Israel and Gulf states, damaging everything from a military base in Saudi Arabia to a Dubai skyscraper that houses a restaurant called Sexy Fish.
Yet the strait has become the focus of the war. Iran has imposed a de facto closure by threatening commercial ships and attacking a few of them. That has blocked roughly 15 per cent of the world’s oil supply, as well as exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar, the world’s biggest producer of the stuff (it accounts for 20 per cent of global LNG exports).
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The Trump administration reportedly did not expect the strait to slam shut — another example of its short-sightedness in the prosecution of this war — and is scrambling for a response.
“One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE,” the president wrote on social media on March 14. Meanwhile Mojtaba Khamenei, or whoever is writing statements in his name — Iran’s new supreme leader has not been seen since he was named to the job a week ago — says it will remain shut.
No images have been released of Mojtaba Khamenei since the start of the war. Credit: AAP
Mr Trump will struggle to make good on his promise. The geography of the strait favours Iran; so does the low risk tolerance of shippers and insurers. Yet Iran has a dilemma as well: so far, closing the strait has been a tactical win that has not achieved its strategic goal of ending the war. The battle for Hormuz may push both sides towards risky escalation.
Just 54km wide at its narrowest point, flanked by mountains on both sides, the strait will be extremely hard for America to reopen. Iran does not have to hit every ship transiting through, merely to convince their owners and sailors that it might hit them.
Sending American troops to secure the coastline is a non-starter, given the size of the force required; Iran could also just continue shooting from inland. Mr Trump is pleading with China, France and other rich countries to send warships to escort commercial vessels. None seems eager to help, unsurprising given how likely such escorts are to become targets.
If Mr Trump cannot wrench the route open, he may escalate elsewhere. For decades he has had a fixation with Kharg Island, a rocky wedge of land in the Persian Gulf that is home to Iran’s main oil-export terminal. He told an interviewer in 1988 that were he president he would “do a number” on it.
On March 13 he got his chance: America bombed dozens of Iranian military targets there, hitting storage depots for missiles and naval mines. The oil terminal was left untouched, for what Mr Trump calls “reasons of decency” (bombing it would cause an environmental disaster).
He may hope to seize it. Commentators on Fox News, who often tailor their remarks for an audience of one, have urged him on. So has Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican senator who has the president’s ear.
Port of Kharg Island Oil Terminal. Credit: Anadolu/Getty Images
“He who controls Kharg Island, controls the destiny of this war,” he wrote on social media. Mr Graham signed his tweet with the words semper fi (always faithful), a shortened form of the motto of America’s marines. That was a noteworthy flourish: he wrote the post hours after the Pentagon announced that a marine expeditionary unit, which trains for this sort of mission, was being redeployed from Japan to the Middle East.
America could probably seize the island. What would happen next is less clear. It would have to hold territory within easy range of Iranian missiles and drones. It may hope to use Kharg to press Iran to make a deal, but the regime is stubborn. Oil markets would be spooked by a further loss of supply—Iran is still shipping more than 1m barrels per day (b/d) to China—and the prospect of a longer ground war.
The closure of the strait has already sent oil prices above $100 a barrel. A number of Asian governments have cut back on air-conditioning in their offices and switched to four-day work-weeks for civil servants or encouraged them to work from home to cope with energy shortages.
Disruptions are starting to ripple through the non-oil economy as well: prices of helium, used in health care and industry, have doubled since the war began, while prices for urea, a fertiliser, are up by more than half. Even so, Iran has not inflicted so much pain on America that Mr Trump feels compelled to stop fighting.
The pain would be worse were it not for two oil pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz. One of them, in Saudi Arabia, can transport up to 7m b/d, two-thirds of the kingdom’s total output, to ports on the Red Sea. The other, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), can move about half of that country’s 3.4m b/d to the port of Fujairah, which is outside the strait.
The pipelines are only a partial workaround for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and they are no help at all to Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, which cannot get their oil and gas to buyers. Still, they will keep a sizeable share of the Gulf’s oil flowing. Dozens of tankers are already sailing towards Saudi Arabia’s west coast to pick up oil. Iran will seek to disrupt them. On the nights of March 12 and 13 it launched more than 50 drones at Saudi oil facilities, up from just a handful at the start of the war (the Saudi defence ministry says they were all shot down).
Smoke and fire rise after debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility, according to authorities, in Fujairah. Credit: Altaf Qadri/AAP
Then on March 14, Iran attempted to hit Fujairah. The drone was intercepted, but debris started a fire that temporarily halted oil exports. Although they resumed the next morning, the attack was a reminder that Hormuz is not the only vulnerability in Gulf oil supply. More such attacks are likely. Iran could also try to hit the pipelines themselves; the one in Saudi Arabia is particularly exposed, stretching for more than 1,200km across the desert.
With so many tankers bound for the Red Sea, Iran might encourage the Houthis, its militia ally in Yemen, to resume their own campaign against shipping. The group largely halted traffic through the Red Sea in 2024 by firing missiles at ships, which it described as a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza. Even a single such attack now would probably be enough to send markets into a panic.
If Iran did any of this, though, it might pull the Gulf states into the war themselves. The Saudis have already warned that damage to their oil facilities would cross a red line. Both sides are in a bind: America has no easy way to reopen Hormuz but Iran may not be able to force Mr Trump end the war by keeping it shut.
