Noah Rothman here with you today, sitting in for Jim Geraghty. Audrey Fahlberg holds down the fort tomorrow. On Thursday, I shall return to the Jolt’s captain’s chair.
On the menu today: Donald Trump’s reported willingness — perhaps even desire — to put a speedy end to his war against the Islamic Republic, even before the U.S. has broken Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
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“In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks,” the Wall Street Journal reported late last night. There are “military options the president could decide on, but they aren’t his immediate priority,” the dispatch added, noting that the Pentagon has prioritized strikes on Iran’s power-projection capabilities like its naval assets, missile and drone stocks, and defense industrial capacity. “If that fails” to break Iran’s will to resist, the Journal added, “Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said.”
Almost from the outset of the war, the legacy press has defaulted to the notion that the U.S. and its Israeli allies could not achieve their objectives. Numerous reported items and opinion pieces have tried to make that case. But if Trump were to call a halt to the war with Iran not just in control of the Strait but operating a “toll booth” across it, the outcome that Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman forecasts, in which Iran “emerges stronger and more dangerous” from the war, becomes easier to envision.
Iran “has demonstrated that it can inflict real damage on its Gulf neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE — placing big question marks over their long-term futures,” Rachman contended. The fees Iran is extorting from the ships that it allows to pass through the Strait could “add billions of dollars a month” to Iran’s coffers if the war ends with Tehran operating a “toll booth” in the Persian Gulf. The Gulf states may be “horrified” by that prospect today, but they’re more likely to pay Iran’s ransom fees than they would be to confront Iran, militarily or otherwise. So, too, will Iran’s Asian and European clients. What remains of the “resilient” regime in Tehran will be more radical, more risk-prone, and more likely to terrorize the world.
Rachman writes all this in sorrow, and he cautions his readers — “those who detest Trump, Israel, or Saudi Arabia” — to think beyond their own prejudices. The admission that his audience salivates over the prospect of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu suffering some embarrassment is, at least, honest. But the author’s scenario depends on some questionable assumptions.
Rachman believes Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are more likely to roll over than adopt a confrontational posture toward Iran because Tehran can hold their critical infrastructure hostage. But as Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy Senior Researcher Karen Young stipulated last week, Iran has conspicuously declined to violate their brightest “red lines” — specifically, the Gulf states’ ability to “use those pipelines that bypass the Strait of Hormuz.” The Gulf Cooperation Council nations “will not tolerate” a “toll booth,” nor is the prospect of “side deals” between Iran and its extortion targets in Asia and Europe “tenable or acceptable” to the region’s many other energy exporters.
Young is right about that. The Saudi oil giant Aramco’s East-West pipeline, which can transport up to 7 million barrels per day to the Red Sea for export, bypassing the Strait entirely, is now operating at full capacity. The UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline, which exports out of the Gulf of Oman, is pumping out about 1.62 million barrels daily, up from 1.17 million barrels in February. And there is additional capacity in the Iraq-Turkey Crude Oil Pipeline, which links Iraq’s production capacity to transshipment nodes on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. These routes will limit the efficacy of an Iranian extortion racket. Moreover, the boosted cost of energy imports will make investments in other routes financially viable.
If the Houthis in Yemen decided to enter the war in earnest (which they have not yet, pronouncements to the contrary notwithstanding), that could really complicate things. For now, though, the Houthi leadership is reportedly divided on the prospect, and fear that their missile stocks will not be replenished by Iran anytime soon has stayed their hands.
Rachman’s scenario depends on the world paying Iran’s extortion fees as a matter of course because the Iranian regime could not hold out for long if it didn’t. The bulk of Iran’s sanctioned crude oil and gas condensate exports are purchased at a discount by China, but the Iranians need Beijing more than Beijing needs Iran. What’s more, the international clientele for the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Emirati, and Qatari commodities that also flow through the Strait can put pressure on the Chinese to take a firmer hand with the terrorists with whom they cultivate relations. Beijing did just that in 2024, when it leaned on the Houthis to ease their squeeze on traffic entering the Red Sea (albeit belatedly, and only after exacerbating the crisis). What’s more, China’s special arrangement with Tehran would complicate relations with countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, both of which export more energy to China than Iran.
Rachman’s scenario presumes the quiescence not just of China but of the rest of the planet as well. But that calculation changes if Iran appears intent on perpetually raising commodity prices.
“When you have a charter that’s paying 10 times the normal value, you’re going to pay your crew a little bit extra money, and you’re going to run the strait,” said maritime historian Sal Mercogliano in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Company, “and that’s exactly what they did.” At least, bum-rushing the Strait was what some Greek crews recently succeeded in doing (Greece owns the second-largest fleet of ships that regularly transit the Strait). Other ships have reportedly impersonated Chinese vessels, thereby successfully evading Iran’s dragnet. That creates yet another disincentive to cooperate with Iran’s authorities, such as they are, but it’s not the most important one.
Arguably, the foremost obstacle to the success of a “toll booth” strategy is the decimation of the Iranian leadership. Who is it that you’re paying for access to the Strait? Can you be sure that they maintain enough control over the regime to convey to the Iranian field commanders on the coast not to attack the ships that comply? Are there any guarantees that Iran’s blackmailers won’t just shake down shipping interests with no intention of honoring those commitments? And just how long can Iran keep up this labor- and capital-intensive gambit — one that is destined to be shot through with holes — even as it suffocates its own economy?
Rahman’s scenario depends on the relaxation of U.S. and Israeli military pressure on the Strait following what we must assume is a catastrophically unsuccessful attempt to open the waterway, if such an operation is attempted at all. That brings us back to the Journal’s report.
It’s not hard to see why Trump would be tempted to let the rest of the world, which relies far more directly on the Strait than America, force Iran to back down. But taking that course would effectively abdicate America’s role as the primary guarantor of free maritime navigation rights. Trump would abandon the precedent Ronald Reagan set in 1987 and 1988 when he compelled Iran to back off an attempt to close the Strait by force. The many U.S.-Israeli achievements in this war would be overshadowed by the appearance of American retreat under pressure, and every revisionist power on earth would understand that even the modest application of force in a narrow waterway can compel the world’s most powerful military to sue for peace.
Meanwhile, though, the U.S. continues to introduce new forces into the region to give the president options. Among other capable analysts, the director of the Urban Warfare Institute, John Spencer, outlined a few.
The U.S. Navy can interdict Iranian oil exports at sea. It can capture and control key islands in the Persian Gulf from which Iran exports oil and gas and which it uses to station military assets and threaten shipping. It can “systematically dismantle” the de facto “toll booth” system it has established in the Strait by neutralizing Iran’s command-and-control personnel, destroying its coastal radar, reconnaissance, and communications systems, and eliminating the sites from which Iran dispatches drones, missiles, and small boats into the Gulf — some of which serve as “toll collectors” and are operating out of bases on key islands like Larak and Qeshm.
Deploying ground forces to neutralize Iranian capabilities on these or other critical Islands in the Gulf would be accompanied by significant risks. Iranian forces would attempt to maximize American casualties, and a ground component to this campaign could compel the Houthis to take a more active role in the war. But proving the concept of an open Strait, which likely requires a few successful escort missions following the decimation of Iran’s shore and island defenses, would strip Iran of its most powerful weapon against the West as well as its primary source of revenue. In that event, the figures inside the regime who are coming to terms with capitulation will have a much stronger argument.
If the president decides he has a “good deal” on his hands and bugs out, all bets are off. But what remains of Rachman’s argument if the “toll booth” scenario implodes?
Iran’s power projection capabilities are in tatters, as is its ability to rebuild its arsenals. Its nuclear weapons program would take years to rebuild — work that is almost impossible to carry out in secret. Iran has never been more isolated in its neighborhood as the Gulf states draw themselves closer to Washington’s orbit. Its economy is in worse shape than it was in December and January, when the regime teetered amid a mass outpouring of economic anxiety. And the notion that the Islamic Republic 2.0 could be even more virulent than the last is unpersuasive to those of us who remember how many supposed Iranian moderates came and went without displaying a hint of moderation.
Rachman’s straight-line projection to American failure almost certainly glosses over a few twists and turns in this campaign that are yet to unfold.
ADDENDUM: The Trump administration is “scaling back” a pause it imposed on new asylum applications following the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., last November. Except for applicants from 39 specific “high-risk” countries, CBS News’s sources inside Homeland Security say that the indefinite suspension of new requests filed outside immigration court will soon be over.
Democrats were dismissive of reports in, for example, the Wall Street Journal suggesting the president was growing apprehensive over the tone and optics of his administration’s approach to immigration. They claimed that, whatever adjustments Trump made, they would be wholly cosmetic. Those criticisms may have been premature.