A Strait-Up Debacle

By John R. Puri

Thursday, April 09, 2026

 

I can think of one important way that Iran is better off — and the United States and the rest of the world far worse off — than before the war began. As of now, the regime controls the Strait of Hormuz in every meaningful sense. Iran decides which ships get through, if any. Iran determines whether one-fifth of the regular global fuel trade is cut off, at will. Iran can extort a toll from any ship that wishes to escape the Persian Gulf, so long as it fulfills the regime’s terms.

 

President Trump announced a cease-fire on Tuesday, declaring that U.S. forces would cease striking Iran in exchange for the mullahs opening the Strait of Hormuz. In doing so, he conceded what everyone knows: Iran, and Iran alone, controls whether the strait is open or closed. We know this because, despite Trump’s cease-fire, the Strait of Hormuz remains very much closed.

 

As the Wall Street Journal reported hours ago:

 

Ship crossings through the Strait of Hormuz were limited to eight dry bulk and container ships moving cargo to Iran on Thursday, with the waterway effectively closed to other vessels, according to ship tracker Marine Traffic. Transits in both directions normally number about 135 a day.

 

Brokers said four Chinese tankers with Saudi and Iraqi crude set sail for the strait on Thursday. Four stopped at the entrance of the Persian Gulf and one turned its transponder off and could no longer be tracked. It couldn’t be determined whether the three ships were negotiating passage with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The brokers said the fourth tanker was on schedule to cross the strait on Saturday. “Let’s be clear: the Strait of Hormuz is not open,” Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive officer of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., posted online. “Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled.”

 

Any non-Iranian ship that dares to cross the strait might have to pay a hefty fee for the privilege of not getting blown up. Iran is reportedly charging vessels up to $2 million, or about $1 per barrel of oil carried, paid in cryptocurrency. If traffic in the strait returns to normal levels, that rate could raise $20 million each day for the cash-strapped Iranian regime. A per-vessel levy could extract hundreds of millions of dollars per day.

 

What can the United States do to liberate the Strait of Hormuz from Iran’s grasp? Apparently nothing. U.S. forces have spent over a month trying to end Iran’s capacity to strike tankers, to no avail. Trump threatened to obliterate the country’s infrastructure unless the mullahs reopened the strait, and they did no such thing. He has tried diplomacy, pursued international coalitions, floated risky operations, and promised naval escorts. Nothing has worked. If the United States could open the strait by military force that we are willing to use, we would have done so already.

 

It is clear that American officials underestimated how cheaply and easily Iran could lock up the strait, even after its major offensive capabilities were disabled. The waterway is just 24 miles across at its narrowest point, and unconventional warfare has made safe passage virtually impossible. Small crewed boats can plant sea mines, while unmanned boats laced with explosives can ram directly into tankers. Inexpensive Shahed drones can eat up costly interceptors. The real killers are Iran’s anti-ship missiles, whose mobile batteries can moved frequently and placed anywhere along Iran’s 1,000-mile coastline.

 

Remember also that Iran does not need to be capable of striking every ship that moves through the strait. Even a small likelihood of a successful attack can deter all vessels from crossing. Consider: If a terrorist wants to remove all planes from a given airspace, all he has to do is take down one of them.

 

If Iran could have closed the Strait of Hormuz at any point as a key source of leverage, why did it wait until it was being bombed from all angles? It was probably deterred by the prospect of overwhelming U.S. military force. The neat thing about deterrence is that it can prevent an enemy from taking many actions at once, including those you do not expect. American hard power might have discouraged Iran from attacking its Gulf neighbors and from attacking ships in the strait.

 

But once you spend deterrence by executing a threat, it’s gone. The United States and Israel already bombed Iran to kingdom come. What can they do now to make Iran open the Strait of Hormuz? Assassinate its leadership? Sink its navy? Bury its nuclear material? Ravage its industrial base? Destroy its missile facilities? It has all been done. By its own admission, the U.S. military has run out of targets. What more does Iran have to lose?

 

Here is the reality as it currently stands: Iran can cut off a fifth of the global energy trade whenever it wants, and it’s doing so right now. The United States and its allies — if it has any left — are unable or unwilling to change that. President Trump has agreed to stop all bombing of Iran for the chance that the regime might decide to open the Strait of Hormuz. If it does, Iran can still block all Western-aligned vessels and charge everyone else a toll, providing the mullahs with an enormous new revenue stream in perpetuity. If this new status quo holds, Iran can wield its control of the strait as a catastrophic weapon against the global economy, closing it again whenever the regime feels threatened — or simply wishes to issue demands. And Americans are supposed to believe that we have the upper hand here?

 

What a disaster. So long as Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, it is not remotely obvious that the United States won this war. Quite the opposite.