At the start of this week, President Trump asserted that the Strait of Hormuz was open and under U.S. control. But by Wednesday, as the U.S. and Iran fought it out over the vital waterway, ship tracker Kpler was saying traffic had dropped as the risk to transits deepened.
The result hammered home what many analysts and former military officers have long said: Securing the strait and convincing shippers that it is safe to cross without Iran’s consent would likely take a risky naval-escort mission or a vast and costly ground operation in southern Iran. Either would require a major commitment of U.S. personnel.
“The dilemma is quite simple: At the end of the day, if he wants to take control over the straits, he will need to take over the straits,” Danny Citrinowicz , the former head of the Iran division of Israeli defense intelligence, said of the U.S. president. “He is not able to reach his military or strategic objectives with the force he has now.”
Tuesday morning, U.S. forces radioed a message to ships gathered near the waterway. “U.S. forces are prepared to maintain freedom of navigation and safeguard lawful commerce in accordance with international law,” the military said over marine radio, according to a recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “The southern route of the strait remains open.”
Seafarers, jaded by deadly attacks on vessels in recent days, were skeptical. “F— off,” one sailor is heard responding via his ship’s radio.
Trump has ordered heavy waves of strikes along Iran’s southern coastline in recent days after diplomacy failed to crack open the strait. The military says it targeted missile, drone and naval sites near the waterway.
The strikes early Wednesday went on for seven hours, said the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East. A further 90-minute wave of daytime attacks followed shortly afterward, aimed at degrading Iran’s ability to attack commercial ships, Central Command said. It also said it turned around two ships under its renewed blockade.
Iran hasn’t budged. It has declared the strait closed and ramped up attacks on commercial ships using cruise missiles as well as drones that left nearly a dozen seafarers dead, wounded or missing in recent days, according to the Pentagon.
The fighting has again brought the strait to a virtual standstill. On Tuesday, none of the 21 ships that recorded a crossing of the strait went via the U.S.-backed route close to Oman. Some 16 used Iran’s approved channel, close to its coast. The other five took other routes or had their transponders off. By comparison, last week, an average of 30 vessels a day crossed the strait, split between the Iranian and Omani routes.
Trump has few palatable options to break the impasse. Though the U.S. sank many of the larger ships in Iran’s navy, the country retains enough of its missile and drone arsenal and fleet of small attack boats to deny safe passage to civilian ships.
Close escorts
The U.S. military had limited success sneaking ships through the strait in May and June by leading them along the coast of Oman using jets, drones and helicopters to guard against drone and missile attacks.
But that effort triggered a fierce response by Iran, which targeted the U.S.-designated safe route, sparking new fighting over the strait and dimming shipping industry hopes for a sustainable military solution.
The president could up the ante with close escorts of traffic using American warships. Experts estimate it could take two ships to escort a tanker, or a dozen for each convoy. Navy officers warn Iranian drones and antiship missiles have the potential to turn the area into a “kill box” for U.S. forces.
Land invasion
At the extreme, Trump has the option of a large and costly ground operation to seize the territory around the waterway, whose rocky shores present unique challenges. That would require thousands of troops in an operation that would likely take months.
Iran has been preparing for a possible invasion since before the war. The paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has 190,000 troops, along with the country’s regular army, and specializes in fights against better-armed foes.
A ground operation on Iran’s coastline would leave U.S. troops extremely vulnerable to attacks from the country’s rear, said David Des Roches , a former Persian Gulf-focused U.S. defense official.
Widen the air campaign
Another option would be to escalate military pressure by launching strikes on Iran’s power plants, bridges and roads. Trump has threatened such strikes repeatedly over the course of the war, including this week. But doing so would risk Iranian retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure and still might not persuade the country’s hard-line regime to relent.
More than 20,000 airstrikes, and the lure of billions of dollars in sanctions relief and unfrozen assets set out in Trump’s initial peace deal, have failed to convince Iran to relinquish control of the strait.
“Iran is not going to back down from asserting its control over the strait, and I think Trump is growing increasingly frustrated,” said Dina Esfandiary, a Middle East expert at Bloomberg Economics. “I don’t see a way out of this.”
Despite the threats, the U.S. and Iran haven’t shown an appetite to return to the intensity of the no-holds-barred conflict that ran from the end of February through early April.
The U.S. has mainly struck Iranian coastal sites, and Iran has largely retaliated against U.S. allies such as Kuwait and Bahrain before de-escalating. The U.S. hasn’t hit Tehran or Iran’s heartland. Iran has largely avoided attacking Israel or Persian Gulf energy infrastructure.
Trump has frequently threatened Iran with heavy strikes only to return to the diplomatic path he has said he prefers. U.S. officials said few people around him believe he wants to go back to all-out war, though he has received briefings on what a return to that level of fighting could look like, the Journal has reported.
The current round of strikes, however, has gone on for much longer than previous exchanges. The U.S. is hitting a broader range and higher number of sites. Iran has recently attacked ships belonging to the United Arab Emirates and targets in Oman.
Iran’s attacks over the past week have been some of the deadliest for shippers since the early days of the conflict.
“Both sides are escalating in a dangerous way in order to increase leverage and weaken the other, and eventually return to the negotiating table, preferably with a stronger hand,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East program at London think tank Chatham House. But the showdown could backfire and spark a bigger conflict if they don’t find an off ramp, she said.
Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com , Rebecca Feng at rebecca.feng@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
