With Ceasefire Over, Hormuz is Key to Victory Over Iran

Guaranteeing global freedom of navigation — an American principle ever since President Jefferson sent troops to fight Barbary Coast pirates — is emerging as a decisive factor in the newly-ignited war against the Islamic Republic of Iran.President Trump and Tehran officials declared the demise of a ceasefire agreed in a 21-day-old Memorandum of Understanding. That pact was meant to end the Iranian chokehold on Strait of Hormuz shipping. Renewed hostilities, initiated Monday night as Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps attacked ships traveling the strait, might be short-lived. In any case, oil exportering countries are finding alternative routes to Hormuz.“Anything that happens is going to be over very quickly,” President Trump told reporters at Ankara, where a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit ended Wednesday. Yet just as the Islamic Republic blew up the memorandum by attacking ships traveling Omani waters in the Strait of Hormuz, it can reignite war whenever it chooses.For two days America hit Iranian targets while Iran targeted American?bases in Bahrain and other neighboring states. Targets in Iran included “facilities where they were storing drones or missiles, coastal defense sites, radar sites, surveillance sites — anything used to harass shipping in the strait,” secretary of war Pete Hegseth, said.Mr. Trump indicated that further strikes are in the offing Wednesday night, although he excluded boots on the ground in Iran. Can America, then, open Hormuz militarily?“I would say not without putting U.S. troops on Iranian soil,” the editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, Bill Roggio, tells the Sun. “It’s not just Iran’s ability to attack, but the credible threat of being able to strike ships.” To counter that threat, he adds, “you need to limit Iran’s ability to access the coastline.”The Iranian’s latest attempt at shipping disruption is baffling to outsiders. Mr. Trump said that his military response on Tuesday was “a hundred times” more powerful than the Iranian strikes. And even before ordering military retaliation, the president announced an end to a top concession in the June 17 memorandum by reinstating a ban on Iranian oil sales. The mullahs will likely continue to export to Communist China, but they will need to heavily subsidize the oil price. Meanwhile as American sanctions return, global banks will hesitate to process Iranian oil transactions. Uncertainty about future American restrictions will intensify their reluctance even if sanctions are eventually eased. Setting up a “toll booth” at Hormuz is a “classic Iranian overreach,” an Israeli strategic consultant on global economics, Eyal Hashkes, writes on X. The June 17 memorandum, he notes, removed oil sanctions. Now, he adds, “to achieve what could at best earn the Iranians a few billions of dollars a year, they’re sacrificing the prospect of gaining tens of billions. And the damage from military targets in the last two nights would probably amount to a few billions anyway.”The mullahs, though, don’t see it that way. For them, stopping ships at the strait of Hormuz represents the equivalent of a “nuclear weapon,” a former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, was quoted by TASS as saying. While attending the funeral of the late Ali Khamenei, the Moscow politico added that the Islamic Republic could also halt all shipping in the Red Sea, where more than 20 percent of world commerce travels. “I think that Iran has in reserve not only this nuclear weapon, but also a thermonuclear weapon,” Mr. Medvedev said. “That is the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which could be used in the event of military conflicts, creating a situation in which all oil shipments and other cargo transport would essentially be locked down.”Since the ceasefire memorandum was signed three weeks ago, oil prices dipped to $69 a barrel from an earlier high of more than $120. Rates inched up Wednesday on the news of renewed hostilities, but Mr. Trump says that a $2 increase in oil prices means “very little.”For now, global oil supplies overwhelm demand, Bloomberg reported over the weekend. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are bypassing Hormuz as they export oil and gas through alternative routes, rendering the Iran-controlled strait less significant than it had been before the war. At the same time, global energy prices depend on perception, including questions over America’s ability to free Hormuz from Iranian threats. For oil prices to remain low, the strait “has got to remain open,” Vice President Vance said Wednesday. “If the Iranians try to close it down, there’s going to be a response by the American military.”

With Ceasefire Over, Hormuz is Key to Victory Over Iran

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