Despite weeks of reports about a potential game-changing US operation to fully open the Strait of Hormuz, such an operation against Iran is not imminent, and may not occur at all, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
This was true even before US President Donald Trump’s latest comments on Monday about a potential ceasefire in the coming week, and so it is likely to remain true even if talks fail and the war continues.
To date, the strategy and planning for dealing with the issue have been developed multiple times.
Hormuz was not always at the top of the war list
Pre-war and at the start of the war, the issue of the Strait of Hormuz was not at the top of the list of either US or Israeli war planners, and was at most on a list of long-term pressure points which Iran might eventually invoke on its way to agreeing to some kind of a deal with the West.
Then again, at those points, many top officials and most analysts believed that the war would not last more than a few weeks, if not shorter.
In such a shorter war scenario, it had taken Iran time to even start to close off the strait to maritime trade; it took more time for that to impact the global price of oil, and it was likely that the strait would be reopened as part of a ceasefire without the need to take dramatic actions to open it.
However, as of Monday, Iran had been uninterested in any deal that the Trump administration would so far find acceptable, essentially demanding a ceasefire with no pre-ceasefire concessions.
Some time into the war, the Trump administration suddenly found itself having to cope with the impact of the strait being closed for longer if it did not want to end the war on Iran’s terms.
Three strategies for the Strait of Hormuz
Three strategies sprang up for handling the issue.
One was to take a variety of other actions, including selective bombing of Iran’s oil or gas sector and assassinating more Iranian leaders to try to coerce the Islamic Republic into cutting a deal, including opening up the strait, though the massive airstrikes had so failed at that as of Monday.
Another option was to try to use military force to clear Iran out of the strait so that global shipping could resume in that area.
For weeks, US military planners presented Trump with the pros and cons of using US naval vessels or NATO partner vessels to escort commercial ships through the Straits.
Had Trump or NATO decided in favor of such a plan quickly, it might even have been implemented last week.
However, US military officials explained to Trump that sending American or NATO vessels through the strait would flip America’s usual qualitative military advantage in favor of Iran’s local strengths.
It would not matter that America’s ships and air force are more powerful than Iran’s entire military.
All that would matter, said the military officials, was that once US ships stuck themselves smack into Iran’s crosshairs in the limited maneuverability area that makes up the strait, Iran has so many small naval and aerial threats, from mines to drones, that it could overwhelm US or NATO ships with volume-style attacks.
After seeming to reject the naval escort option, Trump ordered US military forces to start attempts at clearing the strait.
Already last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US and its allies had ramped up some initial exploratory efforts to reopen the strait, deploying low-flying warplanes to strike Iranian boats and Apache helicopters to intercept drones.
Efforts to reopen the Strait
Earlier in the day, the top US general, Dan Caine, announced that US A-10 Thunderbolt II jets, commonly known as the Warthog, had entered the war and were on missions along Iran’s southern flank.
The A-10 is “hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft in the Straits of Hormuz,” Caine said in remarks to the press at the Pentagon. “In addition, AH-64 Apaches have joined the fight on the southern flank, and they continue to work on the southern side. And that includes some of our allies who are using Apaches to handle one-way attack drones.”
A US official told the Journal that both A-10s and Apache helicopters had been operating over the last few days to destroy Iran’s fast-attack vessels that have been harassing commercial shipping in the strait.
The official noted that these aircraft have joined jets in the area that are also capable of striking at these watercraft, but that the addition of the A-10s and the Apaches has intensified the US military effort there.
In unclassified video footage published by US Central Command on Thursday, US strikes are shown blowing up Iranian naval assets in the Strait.
“US forces are destroying Iranian naval targets that threaten international shipping in and near the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM stated in the X/Twitter post showing the strikes.
However, the Post understands that all of these uses of force were preliminary and far from sufficient to completely clear the area of water mines, drone threats, and concealed Iranian anti-ship missiles.
In fact, US officials appear to have told Trump that completely clearing the Straits might require American “boots on the ground” in the area and a much larger and sustained air war for at least another three weeks or so.
Further, the Post understands that even such efforts might be only 80-90% effective at removing Iranian threats – a high percentage, but possibly still too low to convince commercial shipping interests to risk traveling through the area.
While the US could eventually reach 100% safety, the Post understands that estimates suggested this could take even longer.
Given that Trump has wanted a shorter war, it appears that he is not pursuing clearing the strait by jumping the aerial war and using ground troops in the near future.
Rather, besides the diplomatic option, which he tried to bring back on Monday after it had been nonexistent for three weeks, Trump has been more interested in the potential option of taking over Iran’s Kharg Island, including using thousands of US marines who are being moved into the area.
This third strategy would be a new effort to pressure the Islamic Republic to reopen the strait by cutting off all of its remaining major sources of economic revenue.
Kharg Island was already bombed by the US and would be much less threatening or require less military work than clearing the Straits.
Yet, if Iran ignored that pressure, believing it could outlast the US in a contest of who could inflict more overall misery, Trump could be out of options. In that case, he might cut a less favorable ceasefire deal with Iran, or finally decide on an unexpected willingness to engage in a much longer war than had been previously conceived of in order to clear the strait militarily.