We’ve all heard the apocryphal Winston Churchill line about the Americans always doing the right thing after exhausting all the alternatives.
That doesn’t quite apply to the fight for the Strait of Hormuz, but after appearing surprised by Iran’s effective closure of the strait early in the war and then seeming powerless to reverse it, CENTCOM has largely reopened the strait in what could prove a turning point in this latest chapter of the conflict with Iran.
The U.S. military created a safe passage hugging the coast of Oman and has been providing military protection to ships transiting through it. At the same time, the Gulf states came up with the ingenious idea of shuttling oil through the risky waters of the strait with vessels often controlled by the producers themselves, then pumping that oil onto commercial tankers from the safety of the Gulf of Oman to be carried to their ultimate destination — before repeating the process again.
By some estimates, the amount of oil getting through the strait is about 80 percent of the prewar level. This isn’t going to collapse the elevated fuel prices that are weighing on Republicans so heavily ahead of the midterms. The military effort is also resource-intensive and not sustainable over the long run, while the Iranians could always choose to escalate in surprising and unwelcome ways.
Still, the freer strait has eroded Iran’s chief point of leverage. There is much less temptation now to give the Iranians a generous MOU-type deal in exchange for opening the strait, when the firepower and resourcefulness of the U.S. and its allies are already successfully getting ships through.
On top of this, the U.S. blockade is crushing the Iranian economy. Whereas Gulf state oil is getting out, Iranian oil is not, denying Iran a source of hard currency. The rial has fallen to an almost Weimar-like 2.5 million to the dollar. No one should underestimate the regime’s ability to absorb pain or its willingness to gun down protesters. But everyone has their breaking point. At the very least, the current situation suggests that time is now on our side in the fight over the strait.
To his credit, President Trump has shown very little inclination to TACO on the war, except when he blinked and signed the short-lived MOU, and despite his wild threats and chronically unrealistic assessments. He may have found a way to grind the Iranians down and perhaps get a deal worth having.
The war has been costlier and more drawn-out than the president expected, and it was a bad mistake not to go to Congress for an authorization. The politics have been dreadful in a year that was already going to be a tough one for Republicans. But after exhausting some unpalatable alternatives, the U.S. is increasingly denying the Iranians use of what they assumed was their Strait of Hormuz trump card.