Strait Flush

By Kevin D. Williamson

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

 

The Trump administration has blocked the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the Iranians’ having blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the geopolitical version of, “You can’t fire me! I quit!” It is not quite banished Coriolanus howling “I banish you!” at his tormenters, but it will have to do.

 

The question before the world—and the White House, and the American voter—is not who can close the Strait of Hormuz but who can keep it open.

 

These are not the same question. The Trump administration seems to think that keeping the strait open is a task that should be in Tehran’s portfolio, even though the Strait of Hormuz is not sovereign Iranian territory and in spite of the fact that the Iranian government is the last party on God’s green Earth that any sensible human being would wish to leave in control of the economically sensitive waterway.

 

Anybody with a little bit of firepower can close the Strait of Hormuz—the U.S. military, of course, but also the Iranians, or, presumably, the Royal Navy of Oman, if the powers that be in Muscat were willing to endure the consequences, to say nothing of more consequential seafaring powers such as the United Kingdom, India, or China, or, for that matter, any state or private actor willing to put forward the small expenditure necessary for a few mines. There are drug cartels with resources sufficient to the job of closing the strait, if there were some profit in it.

 

The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway under maritime law, but the Trump administration insists on treating the strait as though it were sovereign Iranian territory, doing so for reasons ranging from incompetence to political cowardice. Washington has negotiated with Tehran on a sovereign-to-sovereign basis, entertaining this or that concession in exchange for reinstating open international access to the Strait of Hormuz, and, whatever gloss is put on that by Donald Trump and his warmaking team—one part Village People, one part Apple Dumpling Gang—that amounts to a recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the strait. Iran is losing the war so badly that it now has been, in effect, granted recognized sovereignty over new territory. So much winning.

 

Any half-organized gaggle of pirates could make a good go of closing the strait. Keeping the strait open and secure is a heavier lift—which is why the Trump administration, whose key figures have never lifted anything heavier than money, would prefer that the Iranians do the job. Never mind the inescapable instability that will be created by leaving the strait under the control of an unstable gang of Islamist fanatics—one whose most effective and most accessible geopolitical weapon is interrupting traffic in the strait; for the Trump administration, the alternative is something unthinkable: hard work that does not pay much.

 

U.S. forces could keep the strait free and clear on their own, if Washington so desired, but this would involve some real expense and considerable risk, including the risk that millions of Americans will one day peer into their mobile self-moronization devices to watch the TikTok video of a $15 billion U.S. Navy ship burning and sinking after being attacked by $500,000 worth of drones or encountering a $10,000 mine.

 

Washington could, as an alternative, try to put together an international coalition to keep the strait open—if Washington had any competent international partners who regarded the Trump administration as a credible, reliable, good-faith partner. But, unhappily for that prospect, Paris and London and Berlin are not at present inclined to such an extraordinary level of self-delusion, even if those capitals are as thickly planted with dupes and dunces as Washington. Oman, long a junior partner in the strait, has good reason to believe that Iran remains more credible as a potential enemy than the United States is as an ally.

 

From Ottawa to Tokyo, it surely has not escaped the world’s attention that it is the United States, not Iran, that is the reigning world champion when it comes to the cynical and self-serving weaponization of trade and trade relations. Word has reached Brussels—and has even gone as far as Copenhagen!—that the United States is full of blistering contempt for its erstwhile allies, a contempt felt especially strongly by senior administration figures such as J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth. It is difficult to imagine that Ursula von der Leyen is going to look up from her relentless LinkedIn posting long enough to suddenly give the nod to a great big gushing flood of euros to bail out a U.S. administration that was only a few months ago threatening to make war on a NATO ally and member of the European Union. What would be in it for the Europeans? If anything, the timid and underarmed continental leadership might prefer that the Strait of Hormuz be dominated by a hostile power that is weak rather than by a hostile power that is genuinely powerful. The Europeans may not be ready to fight a big war, but they can still afford a good bit of bribery.

 

Keeping the strait open for business means taking effective command over the water and adjacent land not only in the strait itself but also immediately on both sides of it. There is little question that U.S. forces could do the job, but it will be a bloody and expensive job as long as the Iranians are willing to keep fighting the war—and, while events remain utterly unpredictable, we do not seem to be in any way obviously on the brink of that “unconditional surrender” that the U.S. president was talking about approximately five minutes ago. Perhaps there will be an internal crackup in Tehran that will create an opening for Washington.

 

But any settlement that is based on the assumption—however implicitly accepted—that access to the Strait of Hormuz is Tehran’s to grant or revoke will settle nothing at all. It could, however, give the Iranians what they want: time, including the time to take another bite at the atomic apple.