“President Trump has vowed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the vital artery for the world's energy supply that has been closed off by Iran. It won't be easy.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly pledged that naval vessels will escort oil tankers and other ships through the strait. On Thursday, Trump said escort operations would begin "very soon." In a pair of social-media posts on Saturday, the president called on other nations to help.
The U.S. is holding off on sending warships into the strait -- just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point -- with Navy officers saying Iranian drones and antiship missiles could turn the area into a "kill box" for U.S. sailors.
One option to clear the way for escorts would be a more intense use of air power to hunt and destroy Iranian missiles and drones before they could be fired at ships in the strait. Another would be to use ground troops to seize the territory around the waterway.
The administration has said it is keeping all options on the table, including the use of ground troops. On Friday, Trump ordered a Marine expeditionary unit, which typically has warships with thousands of sailors, attack jets and 2,200 Marines, to the Middle East.
In an escort operation, U.S. warships, maybe in conjunction with allied navies, would travel through the strait alongside oil tankers to clear mines and fend off Iranian attacks from the air as well as from Iran's "mosquito fleet" of small, fast-attack boats.
Experts estimate it could take two ships per tanker, or a dozen ships to guard convoys of five to 10 tankers, to have the necessary air defenses. The short distances involved make shooting down missiles and drones more difficult.
Despite weeks of U.S. and Israeli attacks that have decimated Iran's navy and military capabilities, its commanders are still demonstrating the ability to strike.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a veteran naval officer, estimates that, alongside warships, it would require at least a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones patrolling the skies and striking Iranian missile and drone launchers when they pop up on the coast.
"That's thousands of soldiers and sailors, and a pretty sizable investment of money, and you might have to do it for months," Clark said.
Other military experts have proposed other aircraft, such as the Marines' Harrier Jump Jet, as an option to support the escorts.
Committing ships to tanker escorts means taking them out of offensive roles or broader missile defense. Trump on Saturday said he hopes countries including China, France and the U.K. would send ships to help with the task.
Japan on Sunday said the threshold for deploying naval forces to the Strait of Hormuz remains "extremely high," while South Korea said it would review Trump's call and U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Britain was "talking with our allies" about ways to reopen the waterway.
Delays caused by security measures and the number of available warships would reduce tanker traffic through the strait to 10% of its normal level, according to Lloyd's List Intelligence, a leading shipping-analysis firm.
At that rate, it would take months to clear a backlog of more than 600 international trading ships stuck in the Gulf.
Even with that effort, there would remain a significant risk that Iran could land punishing blows, damaging or even sinking warships and commercial vessels. Its antiship cruise missiles are mobile and can be moved quickly for hit-and-run attacks.
The Navy last year decommissioned three old minesweeper ships that had been stationed at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, sending four littoral combat ships to replace them.
A more-expansive military option would be to raid or seize control of a swath of southern Iran to ensure the country's forces can't fire on ships in the strait. That would likely require thousands of troops and a commitment to what could be months of operations in which U.S. forces would be exposed to attacks from a regime fighting for its survival. The raid option would start with extensive airstrikes along the coastline.
That would be followed by U.S. troops landing in southern Iran, most likely Marines making an amphibious assault in an area of mountainous, rough terrain.
Maintaining control of the area would require an invasion, military analysts said. The U.S. would try to suppress Iranian ground forces with airstrikes, keeping them away from the landing force, though there could be direct combat.
Any U.S. troops on the ground would remain targets for Iranian attacks. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- 190,000 troops strong -- and its Quds Force specialize in asymmetric warfare and have spent decades backing insurgents throughout the Middle East.
"If you start with limited numbers of special-operations forces, do you need more forces to protect them?" said Daniel Byman, a former senior adviser to the State Department and U.S. intelligence official. "You have to kind of decide whether to accept gains or double down."
To secure the shipping lane, U.S. troops might have to be deployed in Iran for months or longer.
"You need time. You need time to plan it. You need time to degrade their capabilities. You need time, too, because if you want to take over the Iranian side" of the strait, "you have also to undermine the command and control of the Iranian IRGC," said Danny Citrinowicz, former head of the Iran department in the research division of Israeli defense intelligence.
Reducing but not eliminating the threat of Iranian strikes might not be enough to persuade shippers to use the strait. Only an end to the fighting with Iran, along with assurances from the Iranian government that it will stop attacking ships in the Gulf, would be enough to resume the normal volume of traffic of more than 100 ships a day, military and oil and shipping industry some analysts said.” [1]
The request for China to help defeat Iran is a brilliant one: It is a request for China to cut off the branch of cheap Iranian oil that China is sitting on.
- Strategic Pressure: Trump has warned that his summit with Xi Jinping could be delayed unless China helps secure the shipping route.
1. Trump Wants to Secure Hormuz, But His Options All Carry Risks --- Controlling the strait would mean lengthy warship presence or big ground operation. Malsin, Jared. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 16 Mar 2026: A1.
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