In the wake of this weekend’s failed negotiations in Islamabad, the Iran conflict is back on. So, too, are the Trump administration’s efforts to bring the Islamic Republic to heel. Iran’s persistent efforts to manipulate energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has prompted President Trump to announce that the U.S. military will be enforcing a full blockade of the waterway.
Critics of the Administration have predictably dismissed the move as a desperate, last ditch effort on the part of the White House to regain leverage over Tehran. In truth, the strategy is anything but spontaneous.
A decade-and-a-half ago, while on a visit to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida, I had a candid exchange with a senior military official deeply focused on the Iranian “file.” Even back then, the regime’s energy weapon loomed large in American strategic thinking. CENTCOM’s nightmare scenario, he told me, was not a complete closure of the Strait but a deliberate “narrowing” of it. Through tactics like minelaying, naval drills and the harassment of transiting vessels, Tehran could constrict the flow of oil through the Strait enough to cause a spike in global oil prices without ever presenting Washington with a clear casus belli.
The planned countermove, however, was equally revealing. If Iran ever interfered with the Strait in a meaningful way, the official told me, the waterway would “remain closed – by us.” Such a response would accomplish two critical objectives: it would rob the Iranian regime of its most vital source of hard currency, and it would quickly turn every country relying on Gulf oil into a stakeholder in the containment of the Iranian regime.
The logic was elegant. America had the ability to turn Iran’s greatest geographic advantage into a dangerous vulnerability. And that’s precisely what is happening now.
Iran entered the current conflict with an economy already on the brink of collapse. Inflation was extremely high,approaching 70 percent by official estimates, and still accelerating on the eve of the war. Iran’s national currency had undergone a historic devaluation – and was then trending at more than 1.5 million rials to the U.S. dollar. Economic forecasts projected weak or negative economic growth, while purchasing power for ordinary Iranians was declining precipitously amid shortages and spiraling costs.
All this was before the war. The joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign that began on February 28th has left Iran’s economic prospects in a much more precarious place. Preliminary estimates now put the damage to the country’s critical and civilian infrastructure – including factories, power stations and key transport nodes – in the neighborhood of $145 billion.
These military blows have robbed Iran of much of its remaining economic resilience. They have also left the Islamic Republic vulnerable to precisely the kind of pressure that a cutoff of its energy exports – including, crucially, the regime’s extensive oil supplies to China – can deliver.
The precise form the U.S. blockade will take is still unclear. President Trump has expressed hopes that other countries will pitch in to help isolate the Islamic Republic. But so far, America’s international partners have shown little appetite to do so. Even if they don’t, however, military experts confirm that the United States has the firepower and naval assets to do it by itself – at least for a while.
By blockading the Strait, Washington has effectively taken a page from Iran’s own playbook, and weaponized the very chokepoint that Tehran sought to exploit. It is also forcing Iran’s surviving strongmen to make a choice: genuine concessions regarding their nuclear program and regional behavior, or economic strangulation. We’ll see soon enough which option they select.
About the Author:
Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
