Defense

Why Iran’s grip on the Hormuz Strait will be hard to break

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by Tolu Talabi - 04/25/26 6:00 AM ET

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by Tolu Talabi - 04/25/26 6:00 AM ET

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A giant banner hangs on the side of a building in Tehran’s central Enqelab Square declaring, “The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed; the entire Persian Gulf is our hunting ground.”

It’s a blaring reminder of Iran’s key point of leverage in its war against the United States and Israel; and it’s a signal of what analysts say is President Trump’s almost impossible task of restoring free access to one of the world’s most important waterways.

Trump announced Tuesday that he would delay renewed strikes on Iran until it came forward with a proposal for long-term peace, unilaterally extending a 14-day ceasefire indefinitely. However, he said the U.S. would maintain its naval blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports in the critical maritime trade route.

Alam Saleh, a senior lecturer in Iranian studies at the Australian National University, said the blockade is playing into Iran’s hands.

“This policy actually is not necessarily practical. It’s not helping much, and it never will convince Iran to withdraw or to give up, definitely not,” he said.

“If Iran stops others’ oil and if the United States stops Iran’s oil, that means the Strait is fully closed thanks to both the United States and Iran,” Saleh said. “And it’s something that makes Iranians happy. This is what they want. This was their strategy from the very beginning of this war, to keep the oil price high, to affect the global economy, to make this prolongation of the war quite costly for the United States.”

“So what President Trump is doing is helping Iran’s strategy to take place in a shorter time,” he added.

Leverage game

Almost as soon as joint U.S.-Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran more than 50 days ago, Iran’s military effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a 22-mile-wide corridor that typically facilitates about 20 percent of the world’s energy trade.

Once Iranian forces sent a few tankers up in flames, the rest stopped trying to pass through.

While Iran exerting control over the strait has long been forecast in U.S. war games, the effectiveness of its tactics seems to have caught the Trump administration off guard.

“Before Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. and Israel did not see a lot of risk in attacking Iran, launching a war against it, or bombing it, and now, Iran has demonstrated that it can basically take the global economy hostage if its enemies decide to launch a war,” said Jim Krane, a Persian Gulf energy expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “It gives Iran a pretty strong deterrent to try and ward off future U.S. attacks on it.”

Iran said it would reopen the strait for commercial ships following the temporary truce agreement between Lebanon and Israel. Then hours later, it reversed the decision, stating the strait would remain closed until the end of the U.S. blockade.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy warned in a statement on Saturday that “approaching the Strait of Hormuz will be considered co-operation with the enemy, and the offending vessel will be targeted.”

The implications of the stalemate on global energy supplies are enormous. While the U.S. faces soaring gas prices, other countries face more severe consequences. The Philippines declared a state of national emergency in March due to dwindling energy supplies; a shortage of jet fuel in Europe has spurred refueling restrictions and canceled flights; and farmers across the world are facing a looming fertilizer shortage.

While the U.S. is inflicting major pain on Iran’s economy through its blockade, Saleh said the impact on China, which imports roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil, could ultimately create problems with Trump’s efforts to strike a trade deal with Beijing.

“Yes, United States can stop oil tankers that goes to somewhere else, but to China? That is a different cup of tea,” Saleh said.

Firms that monitor the global shipping industry say more than two dozen Iranian-linked tankers have managed to skirt the U.S. blockade in its first week, indicating Iran’s energy economy has not been completely cut off.

Geography vs. military might

Trump and his military leaders often tout how badly Iran’s military was degraded during a month of battering by U.S. and Israeli missiles and bombs.

Still, Saleh said the world’s greatest military “cannot control over 3,000 kilometers of the sea, shipping and the routes, [and] hundreds of ships going and coming into the strait from different parts of the world.”

Nor can it control Iran’s coastline wit