April 03, 2026
Photo The Sunday Guardian
Strait of Hormuz and the War
On Tuesday March 31 President Trump appeared to announce that he will be ending the disastrous air war on Iran within the next two weeks. Stocks soared based on this, while oil prices dropped three dollars per barrel. With Trump, however, one can never be sure exactly what he is going to do, even when he appears to clearly state it. But if Trump does in fact call off the airstrikes and gets Israel to stop bombing Iran it will be nothing more than a total defeat of the US and a total victory for the Iranian regime.
Trump went into this war with no clear idea of what his goals even were. He was very heavily influenced by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been wanting the US to go to war with Iran for years. In the first few days of this war a whole slew of differing war aims was trotted out. Destroy Iran’s nuclear program, or destroy its missile program, or sink its basically non-existent navy, or force it to give up its support of Hamas and Hezbollah, or have the Iranian people rise up on the backs of Israeli bombs and overthrow the clerics that run Iran. After a month of air strikes that hit over 1,600 targets, the US and Israel have not achieved any of these. In fact, Iran has shown remarkable resilience even though the US killed the Supreme Leader Khamenei and several other senior regime figures. Iran has continued to strike targets in the Persian Gulf, has damaged US airbases, and has launched missiles that have hit Israel. Most importantly, Iran has been able to use its drone and missile and sea mining capability to close the Strait of Hormuz, thereby blocking 15% of the world’s crude oil supply and a large fraction of liquefied natural gas exports from sailing through.
This blockage of the straits has flummoxed the US and Trump. This was entirely predictable by anyone with a map, and yet Trump had no effective response to this. Oil prices soared, and shortages are starting to appear in Asia. Oil producers in the Persian Gulf such as Iraq have had to shut down oil wells as there is no place to pump the crude to. Refiners in Asia are starting to wind down output as they stop receiving the crude they need to process. This backlog is going to take weeks to restart pumping and processing of oil. LNG exports will also take a while to come back online. What this means is that the world is still going to face high oil and gas prices for the next few months even if the war ended tomorrow and Iran reopened the straits.
But the war is not ending tomorrow. Even if the US and Israel call off their airstrikes, why would Iran agree to reopen the straits? It has its grip on a critical chokepoint of the entire global economy, and it is not going to release that without something major in return. This is going to force Trump to the negotiating table where he holds no cards. He cannot credibly threaten to invade Iran. Nor can he really threaten to carry out war crimes and destroy Iran’s oil fields and civilian infrastructure. In fact, destroying Iran’s oil fields would drive oil prices higher and keep them high for years till Iran can repair the damage.
Trump on some level knows this, and he realizes that once he gives Iran concessions at the bargaining table, he will be seen as the loser of this war. Iran would at a minimum require a US and Israeli guarantee of never attacking Iran again. In return Iran will not need to make any commitments on its nuclear program or its support for regional proxies.
Trump can see this coming. The American people already do not support this war and the high gas prices it has brought. But even if he tries to insist he actually “won” something will only further erode Trump’s declining support among the American people. This bodes very poorly for the Republicans in the coming November midterm elections. Expect to see a wipeout in the House and a good chance the Democrats pick up the four seats they need to take control of the Senate. Facing a hostile Congress will leave Trump powerless during his last two years.
Trump is going to try to spin the Hormuz closure as someone else’s problem. Already he appealed to the Europeans to come and save him and they refused. Trump is going to insist that since the oil from the Gulf mostly goes to Asia and Europe, it is up to Asian and European countries to end the Iranian closure of the straits. But it is America and Israel that need to now satisfy Iran’s conditions to reopening the tanker flow.
