No new deal, no cease-fire, no umpteenth round of bombing will change this reality.
Enough time has passed for a conclusion: Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and there is essentially nothing we can do about it. No new deal, no cease-fire, no umpteenth round of bombing will change this reality. It is the outcome of dominoes that fell months ago, which the Trump administration has proven incapable of standing back up.
Within the first month of the war, we made it so that Iran had almost nothing left to lose. We assassinated its leadership, sunk its navy, buried its nuclear material, ravaged its industrial base, and destroyed its missile facilities — the ones we could hit, anyway. Yet the regime survived. Correctly recognizing the fight as existential, and seeing that America had already thrown everything it had at the regime, Iran activated its economic nuclear weapon. We had nothing left to punish its aggression in the strait, because we had nothing more than what Iran had already sustained. Having run out of targets, the U.S. military is reduced to polling its troops for ideas.
The administration tried repeatedly to loosen Iran’s grasp on the strait militarily. Nothing worked. Iran’s capabilities to shut down traffic — drones, boats, mines, mobile missile batteries — are so inexpensive and easy compared to the capabilities necessary to prevent their use. Witness asymmetric warfare at its most effective.
Think regime change is the solution? It would be if the president had a magic wand. Alas, there is no realistic plan to replace Iran’s cancerous government even if we could topple it, nor is there any plan to deal with the insurgency, hundreds of thousands strong, that would immediately follow. Trump, understanding this, won’t land even a single pair of boots on Iranian soil.
The only remaining option was to bargain with Iran, thus conceding that the Strait of Hormuz was open or closed at its discretion. No negotiation can change its simple possession: Iran decides whether ships can traverse the strait. Iran decides which ships are let through. Iran decides whether they are tolled, and at what rates. At best, the United States can influence these decisions — overwhelmingly with carrots, since we used all our sticks at the start of the war. Absent a credible punishment beyond what we have already inflicted, we can no longer coerce these decisions via deterrence.
Nor can we simply drill a hole around the strait. Alternative trade routes will take years to develop and may never fully replace the strait’s capacity. The Economist reaches three conclusions based on available data:
First, the staying power of the Iranian threat varies by commodity and country. Second, Iran’s ability to cash in on the strait will diminish but may never vanish. Third, even if the fees Iran can charge diminish over time, its strategic leverage will not necessarily fade in step. Indeed, it may even deepen as the regime institutionalises its regional influence.
Consequently, the “analysis suggests that Iran will be able to weaponise Hormuz for some time — and monetise it.”
There are talks of how President Trump must not surrender to Iran’s control of the strait. Shall we also refuse to surrender to a shattered glass after tossing it onto the ground? Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz is how things are. We can either “surrender” to this cold reality, or continue to thrash against it for no gain.
It’s true, acceptance of this immovable state of affairs would look something like walking away. Iran’s chokehold on global commerce is extremely undesirable, though not eternal. Given time, the regime will rebuild enough to fear another attack and will adjust its behavior accordingly.
To contain Iran, we must allow it to have something to lose. The question then is whether we husband our regenerated deterrence or squander it yet again.