Iran’s Chokehold on Hormuz Strait Has White House on Defensive

President Donald Trump has warned Iran that it “better stop” any effort to charge fees on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, after agreeing to open the critical waterway as part of a ceasefire agreement earlier this week.

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The US Navy “has the ability to open that strait and keep it open if required to do so,” retired Marine General Frank McKenzie, a former Central Command head, told Bloomberg Radio earlier this month.

Still, a sustained military operation to do so is riddled with practical and political challenges.

“While it may not be too risky for the Navy, it may be too politically risky for the president,” said retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a former CENTCOM deputy commander. “Losing a ship and personnel escorting ships is apparently not a risk he’s willing to take, but this is just conjecture on my part.”

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While Iran had, at the start of the war, a naval capability to close the Strait — with mines, drone boats, fast boats, anti-ship missile — this is not how they are holding shipping at risk currently,” said Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

Instead, he said, “it is Iran’s persistent aerial threat, particularly drones, that has hit commercial ships and caused them to cease transit through the Strait.”

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