"What If the U.S. Navy Isn’t in a Hurry to Reopen the Strait of Hormuz?"

 

That's the intriguing question posed by John Konrad in a lengthy article yesterday.

The Strait of Hormuz is twenty-one miles wide. Two shipping channels, each two miles across, separated by a two-mile buffer. There is no alternative. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline to Yanbu and the UAE’s pipeline to Fujairah can handle maybe five million barrels combined. The math doesn’t work. The bottleneck is not political. It is geological and hydrographic.

Every TV analyst in America is talking about minesweepers and carrier strike groups. They are asking the wrong questions. The binding constraint on Hormuz was never a minefield or insurance. It is the US Navy’s willingness and ability to reopen it.

Every talking point suggests the White House and Navy are working hard to reopen the strait but progress is slow. A new posts on Truth Social suggests we may have to considet a new hypothesis.

“I wonder what would happen if we “finished off” what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called Strait?” wrote President Trump in a psot this morning. “That would get some of our non-responsive “Allies” in gear, and fast!!!”

. . .

The United States now controls the on/off switch for the Strait of Hormuz. Not through naval firepower. Through insurance.

Read the latest MARAD advisory carefully: U.S.-flagged, owned, or crewed commercial vessels operating in these areas should maintain a minimum standoff of 30 nautical miles from U.S. military vessels.

And read this part of the DFC announcement again… “coordinated with US Central Command.”

They cannot pass without the Navy permission.

The green light has not appeared.

. . .

Now connect the dots.

Strike Iran, and Europe either bends or goes dark in an energy crisis.

The European shipping community and political establishment spent the past year dismissing, undermining, and mocking every Trump maritime initiative. They scoffed at the USTR tariffs. They laughed at the SHIPS Act. They blocked the IMO exemptions. They refused to take American maritime policy seriously.

Now their energy supply runs through an insurance facility controlled by Washington.

“Let their navies figure it out.” Except everyone knows they cannot. European naval forces are too small, too slow, and too poorly equipped for sustained convoy escort operations through a contested strait. All the European navies combined could not send more than three ships at a time to defend the Red Sea. An entire German task force sailed around Africa to avoid it.

Eventually Europe will have to capitulate to get the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. insurance backstop, to fully reopen the Strait.

What does “capitulate” look like? The IMO carbon tax. Greenland. Tariff concessions. The SHIPS Act. Every maritime policy priority that Europe and China have been blocking for the past year.

. . .

Look at what the Navy is doing. Or rather, not doing.

The U.S. Navy is in no rush to solve this problem. They are methodically, deliberately, taking their time ... Someone at the top told them to take their time. That signal has to be coming from the White House.

Every day, approximately 1,000 trapped vessels are not available for charter. Every day, European energy dependence deepens. Every day, the DFC reinsurance facility becomes more central to the global shipping system. Every day, the case for concessions on tariffs, the IMO, Greenland, and the SHIPS Act becomes harder for Europe to refuse.

And what does the Navy get for playing along? Support for battleships and stronger allies willing to spend money building their own destroyers when it becomes clear to the world how weak their navies have become.

. . .

I am not arguing that Trump planned this from the beginning ... What I am arguing is that the administration has, whether by design or adaptation, assembled the tools to exploit this moment.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

It's a fascinating thesis, and on the surface it looks entirely rational as a way to solve a whole bunch of problems in one fell swoop.  I agree with the last sentence cited above.  I'm sure President Trump did not intend his actions in Iran to produce this conundrum . . . but it would deal with an awful lot of Gordian knots all at once, wouldn't it?

Peter