‘You cannot beat geography’: Iran already has a nuclear weapon. ‘It’s called the Strait of Hormuz.’
The United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on the argument that if Iran one day got a nuclear weapon, it would have the ultimate deterrent against future attacks.
It turns out that Iran already has a deterrent: its own geography.
Iran’s decision to flex its control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows, has brought global economic pain in the form of higher prices for gasoline, fertilizer and other staples. It has upended war planning in the United States and Israel, where officials have had to devise military options to wrest the strait from Iranian control.
The U.S.-Israeli war has significantly damaged Iran’s leadership structure, larger naval vessels and missile production facilities, but it has done little to restrict Iran’s ability to control the strait.
Iran could thus emerge from the conflict with a blueprint for its hard-line theocratic government to keep its adversaries at bay, regardless of any restrictions on its nuclear program.
“Everyone now knows that if there is a conflict in the future, closing the strait will be the first thing in the Iranian textbook,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israel’s military intelligence agency and now a fellow at the Atlantic Council. “You cannot beat geography.”
In several social media posts on Friday, President Trump said that the strait, which in one post he called the “Strait of Iran,” was “completely open” to shipping. Iran’s foreign minister made a similar declaration. On Saturday, however, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the waterway remained closed, suggesting a divide among Iranian military and civilians on the issue during negotiations to end the war.
Whereas just the prospect of sea mines is enough to scare off commercial shipping, Iran retains far more precise means of control: attack drones and short-range missiles. American military and intelligence officials estimate that, after weeks of war, Iran still has about 40 percent of its arsenal of attack drones and upward of 60 percent of its missile launchers — more than enough to hold shipping in the Strait of Hormuz hostage in the future.
A central goal of the U.S.-led military campaign in Iran is now reopening the strait, which was open when the war began. It is a precarious position for the United States, and its adversaries have taken notice.
“It’s not clear how the truce between Washington and Tehran will play out. But one thing is certain — Iran has tested its nuclear weapons. It’s called the Strait of Hormuz. Its potential is inexhaustible,” Dmitri Medvedev, a former president of Russia and deputy chairman of the country’s security council, wrote on social media last week.
Iran’s control over the strait forced President Trump to announce a naval blockade of his own, and this week the U.S. Navy began forcing cargo ships into Iranian ports after they transited the waterway.
Iran responded with anger, but also taunting. “The Strait of Hormuz isn’t social media. If someone blocks you, you can’t just block them back,” one Iranian diplomatic outpost, which has posted snarky messages throughout the war, wrote on X in response to Mr. Trump’s move. The dispute over the strait has been the focus of numerous A.I.-generated videos depicting American and Israeli officials as Lego characters. [Continue reading…]
Iran said on Saturday that the Strait of Hormuz is again closed to traffic following threats of such action if the U.S. continued its blockade of the shipping channel.
Why it matters: The closure could be a setback to efforts toward a new round of negotiations on a deal to end the war and will add pressure to an already tense situation between Iran and the U.S.
The latest: Fars, Iran’s semi-official state news agency, first reported the closure, citing the ongoing blockade and quoting an Iranian official as saying that the U.S. “continue to engage in banditry and maritime piracy.”
- “As long as the United States does not agree to the complete freedom of navigation for vessels …. the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will remain tightly controlled and in its previous state,” the military official said, according to Fars.
- U.S. Central Command said 23 ships complied with U.S. instructions to turn around since the blockade began earlier this week. It was unclear how many of those ships received instructions after the Strait was closed.
Adding more strain are reports from a U.S. defense official and the U.K. Maritime Trade Operation (UKMTO) that Iran has fired on tankers in the Strait. [Continue reading…]