A Hormuz Handoff?

National Review Online

Wednesday, April 01, 2026

 

President Trump gave a speech to the nation that, at times, could have been ghostwritten by Curtis LeMay.

 

He talked with passion and relish about the devastating U.S. attacks on Iranian military capabilities and threatened more to come, perhaps targeting the Iranian electricity grid and the country’s oil facilities if there isn’t a deal soon.

 

For all that Trump boasted about U.S. power and threatened to use it in even more fearsome ways, he adopted a posture of relative impotence regarding the Strait of Hormuz. He urged the Europeans to open it or, he said, it would open up naturally when the conflict ends.

 

This is not a trifling matter. Since its earliest years, the U.S. has regarded maintaining the freedom of the seas as a vital national interest.

 

We have also long rejected “excessive” maritime claims (which would include the imposition of transit fees) by coastal states. The U.S. recognizes that the Strait of Hormuz is in Iranian and Omani waters but maintains that, under international law, they must be open to traffic, an uncontroversial argument — outside Tehran and other bandit lairs. We hear a great deal from Europeans about the importance they attach to international law. Now would be a good moment for them to show that they mean it.

 

As so often with President Trump, his handling of our European allies over the Iran war has included home truths, gratuitous insults, and profoundly dangerous ideas. The surge in the price of oil and certain other commodities caused by this war has been a windfall for the Kremlin. Denigrating NATO, as Trump has done — let alone threatening to leave it — adds further to Putin’s strategic haul. That is not in this country’s interest, and neither is suggesting that the U.S. might leave the Europeans to sort out the Strait of Hormuz for themselves.

 

The president has, quite rightly, been “encouraging” Europeans to pay more for their own defense, with results far exceeding those achieved by many of his predecessors. But Europe’s defense buildup is still a work in progress. For now, despite Trump’s exhortations, there is only so much that — either acting alone or assisted by Japan and other interested parties — it can do to restore and preserve the flow through the strait. If they tried and were unsuccessful, the result would be a deep economic crisis across a large swath of the globe, with economic and geopolitical effects from which we would not be immune.

 

The American economy’s direct reliance on products — aluminum comes to mind — transported through the strait is greater than often understood. For the U.S. to really leave it to others to sort the strait out would be an invitation to chaos and an act of profound self-harm. Even floating the idea, as the president has repeatedly now, sends the wrong signal.

 

Any outcome to war short of the strait’s again being free for navigation would be inconclusive at best and a strategic setback at worst. Trump should be clear-eyed about this.

 

The ideal solution to the crisis would be the fall of the Iranian regime, but that is outside our direct control. The result of Tehran’s savage crackdown earlier this year — and the years of horror that preceded it — is that many of those who might have led a revolution against the mullahs are dead, incapacitated, exiled, or imprisoned. The attacks on Iran’s machinery of repression may have created some space for an uprising, but that seems unlikely in the near term.

 

If the regime hangs on, it will continue to be toxic domestically, regionally, and globally. As demonstrated by the recent launch of two ballistic missiles with a range that Tehran had said was beyond its capabilities, any pledges it gives with regard to its arsenal, nuclear or otherwise, are worthless. Destroying Iran’s weaponry and weakening its short-term capacity to replace it have been worthwhile efforts, as Trump emphasized in his speech. But absent dramatic changes within Iran, they will probably have to be repeated. Containment is a long and not always peaceful process.

 

In the meantime, unless the United States takes the lead on the strait, the Iranians will remain in control. The strait is out-of-area for NATO, so the force to keep it open will have to be a coalition of the willing, comprising countries inside and outside NATO, including some from a region that has been painfully reminded just how bad a neighbor the Islamic Republic can be.

 

Of course, some potential members of the coalition of the willing have proved strikingly short of willingness to date. But an emphasis on the preservation of international law in the Strait of Hormuz ought to — along with a sense of self-interest sharpened by today’s shortages and price squeezes — persuade some to enlist, even if the most intense phase of combat has to end first.

 

If Trump wants the war to be the national and personal triumph he envisions, and to enhance the country’s deterrent the way he hopes, the strait can’t be left unaddressed.