US General Dan Caine said on the 10th of March that the Pentagon is looking at ways to safely navigate ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reports.
About a fifth of the world’s oil and gas is transported through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran, which sits on the strait’s northern shore, has blocked the busy shipping lane. According to the UN, traffic in the strait has dropped by 97% since the US and Israel launched their first strikes on Iran on the 28th of February.
The narrow waterway, located between Iran and Oman, connects the Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf and is the only sea outlet for oil-producing countries Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. On the 9th of March, oil prices briefly rose to levels last seen after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. If the conflict in the Middle East drags on, it could also disrupt fertilizer supplies, posing a risk to food security. According to data from analytics firm Kpler, about 33% of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has warned that any ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz will be targeted. At least 11 ships have been attacked since the conflict began. However, most traffic has been halted, partly as a precaution and also because insurance providers have raised their premiums by as much as 300%.
US President Donald Trump said on the 3rd of March that the US would provide protection for oil tankers
passing through the strait. French President Emmanuel Macron has said several European countries, India and other Asian nations are planning a joint mission to protect the ships. Macron, however, stressed that such an operation could only begin after the conflict is over. France has already deployed ships to the Mediterranean and Red Seas, including the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, and they could potentially operate in the Strait of Hormuz. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has spoken with Italian and German leaders about options to protect commercial ships that need to use the waterway. General Kane told reporters that a wide range of options were being considered.
The Strait of Hormuz is a complex place. The shipping lane is only two nautical miles (just under four kilometers) wide, and ships have to turn toward Iranian islands and the mountainous coastline, where Iranian forces can easily take up positions.
Retired British Royal Navy commander Tom Sharpe said Iran’s conventional fleet has been largely destroyed, but the IRGC still has a range of weapons and equipment capable of inflicting serious damage, including unmanned boats, mini-submarines and even jet skis rigged with explosives. The non-profit think tank Centre for Information Resilience has estimated that
Tehran can also produce up to 10,000 drones a month.
Sharpe said that in the short term, escorting three to four ships a day would be possible. This would require seven or eight destroyers to cover the airspace, and it all depends on whether mini-submarines pose a threat. Long-term protection of ships would require more resources.
Other experts said that even if Iran’s ability to launch ballistic missiles, drones and floating mines were destroyed, ships would still be at risk from suicide operations. However, if the conflict continues, it will be necessary to consider escorting ships, and such plans are already being made.
Previously, the radical Islamic group Houthis in Yemen, despite having a much smaller military arsenal than Iran, and despite efforts by the United States and the European Union to provide protection for ships, managed to stop most movement in the Babel-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden in the Arabian Sea, for almost two years. Through the Red Sea, ships enter the Mediterranean Sea by passing through the Suez Canal. Most shipping companies still use a much longer route, going around Africa along its southern edge. The EU-led force has been much more successful in fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia, but it is a force that is much less prepared and equipped than the IRGC.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia have tried to find alternative routes for oil exports by building more pipelines. However, they are not yet operational, and the 2019 Houthi attack on a Saudi pipeline proved that alternatives are also vulnerable.
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