“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” That Michael Corleone lament from the much-maligned “Godfather III” comes to mind as the American and Iranian militaries flex muscles in the Straits of Hormuz, as it wasn’t long ago that Washington vowed to leave the Mideast behind and tend to other, bigger challenges, such as Communist China and Russia.

Washington sources tell the Associated Press Thursday that the Pentagon is “considering” putting armed personnel on commercial ships that travel through the Straits of Hormuz, “in what would be an unheard of action aimed at stopping Iran from seizing and harassing civilian vessels.”  

The leak appeared on the second day of one of the largest military exercises Iran is conducting on three tiny islands at the top of the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas is moved. The escalation in tensions follows an earlier beef-up of American military presence in the area.

Like the very body of water in question, which Tehran calls the Persian Gulf and its neighbors insist is an Arab Gulf, the islands in the Hormuz Straits, Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb, are contested. They have been a source of friction between the Islamic Republic and the United Arab Emirates. 

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ navy launched the military drill on Abu Musa Island on Wednesday, complete with small speed boats, paratroopers, drones, and truck-launched surface-to-sea missile systems. Previously unseen weapons, like the Abu Mehdi al Muhendis cruise missile, were part of the well-advertised drill. 

The show of force may have been directed at Moscow and Beijing, both of which had endorsed in the spring a statement by the Gulf Cooperation Council that backed Abu Dhabi’s claim on the tiny islands. The dispute harks back to 1971, when Iran seized the barren but strategically located islands mere days before the UAE gained its independence from Britain.

It may have also been a nod to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The two have recently agreed to joint ownership of Dura, an off-shore gas and oil field in the Gulf. Tehran contests their claim, declaring it “illegal.” A show of force on islands claimed by the UAE and occupied by Iran could deter the Saudis. 

Haggling over sovereignty claims with its geopolitical allies, Communist China and Russia, and muscling out Arab neighbors may have been merely a coincidence, as the Iranian exercises on Abu Musa were likely previously planned. Tehran’s show of military might, nevertheless, seems perfectly timed to respond to a growing American presence in the Gulf.   

Earlier this week, the Pentagon sent to the region the USS Thomas Hudner destroyer and thousands of Marines and sailors on two amphibious assault ships, the USS Bataan and the USS Carter Hall. Also sent in were F-16, F-35, and A-10 Thunderbolt II fighter planes.

“There is absolutely no need for the presence of America or its European or non-European allies in the region,” the IRGC commander, General Hossein Salami, said on Iranian national television. “Our nation is vigilant, and it gives harsh responses to all threats, complicated seditions, and secret scenarios and hostilities.” 

America, though, is concerned about freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vulnerable economic arteries. In May, Iranians seized two tankers, including the Marshall Islands-flagged Advantage Sweet, which had been chartered by Chevron Oil.

While Arab allies in the region were disappointed with America’s response, action on several consequent incidents appeared more muscular. In early July the U.S. Navy said it prevented an Iranian attempt to take over two commercial tankers in international waters in the Gulf. 

Ever since Secretary Clinton coined the Obama-era term “pivot to Asia,” Washington has attempted to decouple from the Mideast. Armed forces in the region were reduced in size. To lower American casualties in anti-terrorism operations, unmanned weapons, such as drones, replaced pilot-steered warplanes. As a result, Tehran’s willingness to take military risks increased.

America’s “interest in unmanned assets may be cost-efficient, but perhaps self-defeating in the long run,” an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam ben Taleblu, says. “The Islamic Republic may be more inclined to mess with unmanned assets than manned ones, given lessons learned about the U.S. threshold for the use of force across several domains of competition in the region.” 

Winston Churchill is claimed to have said that America will always do the right thing — after trying everything else. With America’s energy-related interests on the line, the current beefing-up of military forces around the Hormuz Straits, following a long period of weak responses to Iranian provocations, is a case in point. 

Yet, as Mr. Ben Taleblu says, “it is not just the forces we bring into the region, but what we do with them” that counts.