Iran's Trump card: Choke point warfare
India Today
Trump's speech suggests he's backing away from the Strait of Hormuz. How Tehran mastered the art of choking international maritime stretches.
The world’s most powerful man will not use the world’s most powerful military to prise open the world’s most critical energy choke point.
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz blocked by Iran has been President Donald Trump’s priority for now because, as he put it in his April 2 address, “we have all the oil we need,” also predicting that “the Strait will open up naturally.”
Trump urged his Nato allies— many of whom had refused to join military operations with him, to either deal directly with Iran or buy oil from the US. This is a major U-turn because, over the past few weeks, Trump has threatened to bomb Iranian oil infrastructure and power grids if they didn’t lift the blockade.
Iran responded to the US-Israel war on February 28 by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas is routed. The closure of the strait has brought vessel traffic to a halt, leading to a 60 per cent spike in oil prices and impacting everything on the global economy from semiconductors to fertilisers. The two most powerful air forces in the world have bombed over 16,000 Iranian targets, but haven’t succeeded in getting Tehran to lift the blockade.
Trump’s April 2 statement could indicate the US has moved away from capturing Iranian islands like Kharg Island (as leverage to force Iran to reopen the strait). Other options like seizing Iran’s stocks of over 400 kg of enriched nuclear fuel by ground forces, for instance, might become more attractive.
The U-turn on the strait indicates Tehran’s strategy of choke point warfare has paid short-term dividends.
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Trump's speech suggests he's backing away from the Strait of Hormuz. How Tehran mastered the art of choking international maritime stretches.
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