The announcement Friday that the Strait of Hormuz has been reopened has raised big questions: After weeks of airstrikes, missile launches and drone attacks, is the war against Iran close to over? Or is this progress less than meets the eye?
Unfortunately, it may be both. While citizens and markets alike have reason to celebrate Friday’s progress, no one should presume that the fight has permanently ended.
Some important context: It was becoming increasingly clear the standoff in the Persian Gulf was untenable to both sides. Iran’s ability to bottle up tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has been its strongest card, resulting in massive price increases around the world on crude oil, gas, fertilizer and even food. The economic strain on ordinary Americans has been clear in President Donald Trump’s poll numbers and in comments from Republican lawmakers expressing concerns about the war’s potential impact on the midterm elections. Iran’s goal was obvious: create such economic and political turmoil for Trump that he had no alternative but to negotiate a settlement on Tehran’s terms.
But Iran’s strategy was not perfect. In retaliation, the Trump administration responded with a blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, complicating Tehran’s plans. Iranian-linked tankers that would normally be transiting the waterway were prevented by the U.S. Navy from doing so, which meant lost revenue for Tehran’s war budget and the possibility of reduced oil production should the U.S. embargo persist. Both would have squeezed Iran’s ability to maintain its strategy of keeping closed the Middle East’s most important choke point and harassing energy infrastructure in the Gulf Arab states. And there was always a possibility that the longer the Strait of Hormuz was closed to non-Iranian vessels, the more likely Tehran’s Gulf neighbors were to join the U.S. military campaign in some way.
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