How Trump Took Iran's Trump Card—the Strait of Hormuz—and Made It His Own
The U.S. now controls every oil chokepoint on the planet. How Trump Out-Gangstered the Islamic Republic of Iran
For six weeks, it’s been impossible to turn on your TV without hearing a liberal pundit demand to know why the Trump administration didn’t plan for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz before beginning Operation Epic Fury. The Strait is a waterway that runs along Iran’s southern border. It’s shaped like a bat, with the head creating a neat little chokepoint that 20% of the world’s oil and 90% of China’s must traverse to reach its destination.
After President Trump bombed Iran, Iran retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, only allowing approved vessels to pass. The IRGC shut down the flow of commerce by attacking merchant ships with drones, rockets, and sea mines. The result has been rising global oil prices, and many countries are starting to face an energy shortage.
Hence the wailing pundits.
But what if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t a weapon but instead a vulnerability of Iran’s? Could the Strait be weaponized by the United States against Iran?
That’s the proposition President Trump has decided to test. After peace talks in Islamabad broke down over the weekend, the President announced that he would be closing the Strait of Hormuz with a full U.S. naval blockade, promising that any vessels that Iran allowed through would be “BLOWN TO HELL.”
It is a totally brilliant move. It deprives Iran of its last remaining source of revenue and the only remaining card it had left to play after the U.S. destroyed its navy and took out much of its ballistic missiles. Moreover, the move reveals that Trump is thinking longer term than just keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for a few more years.
The President will stop at nothing short of restoring America as the world’s only superpower, thanks to our energy dominance.
While gas prices are up globally and Americans are feeling that at the gas pump, the oil being held hostage in the Strait was never American, nor was it destined for American markets. The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and gas, meaning we produce more energy than we consume; just 2% of our oil comes through the Strait. It’s Europe’s and China’s oil that got blocked there. Certainly, since markets are global, that does raise the price of gas for American consumers, but that shortage has been driven by drillers and refiners reacting to the global price, rather than a shortage of supply domestically (remember the “greedflation” of the post-pandemic supply chain crisis?).
The salient fact for us remains that the U.S. currently has an abundance of energy—the result of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda. Far from not preparing for a closure of Hormuz, crude exports surged in April to a record 5 million barrels a day, enough to make up for a quarter of regular Hormuz traffic prior to the outbreak of conflict. Combined with Saudi Arabia’s East—West pipeline over land, which is back up and running after being bombed by Iran, the global oil supply shock caused by the closing of the Strait is close to being made up for.
Even better, when Iran tried to strangle the global oil market by closing the Strait, it sent all those empty tankers directly to American ports. There is currently a wave of empty tankers heading through the Gulf of America to fill up. As President Trump put it on Truth Social, “Massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers, some of the largest anywhere in the World, are heading, right now, to the United States to load up with the best and ‘sweetest’ oil (and gas!) anywhere in the World. We have more oil than the next two largest oil economies combined - and higher quality. We are waiting for you. Quick turnaround!“
That oil and gas demand will go straight back into the American economy, and not just in corporate profits. Think of all the truckers and drillers and refiners and welders who will be employed by a surge in demand for oil, the infrastructure that will be built to sustain it. Gas may be up, but it’s nowhere near at record highs, even of the past five years. Meanwhile, in closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran unwittingly created a more resilient oil market, thanks to its own customers being rerouted to our energy sector.
Democrats keep showing up on cable news channels to snarkily point out that the Strait of Hormuz was open before Trump started the war. But that’s nonsense. The Strait may not have been closed, but it wasn’t open. It was entirely controlled by Iran, meaning they could close it at any point. The threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz was one of the IRGC’s most powerful weapons, a deterrent perhaps as powerful as its ballistic capabilities.
But Trump just appropriated their only remaining card, rendering it moot and giving the U.S. economy a boon in the bargain. Suppliers have simply written the Strait of Hormuz out of the equation. We’re watching the biggest energy shift in decades away from our enemies’ pockets and into ours.
Any other president would have buckled under the pressure, the nonstop braying about the cost of gas (CNN finally found it in its heart to admit that Trump got the cost of gas down—only so they can complain that it’s now up!). But Trump’s proposition is the same as it was with the tariffs: Short term pain is worth it for the long term gain of making America the world’s only super power. We now control every oil chokepoint on the planet.
Consider that through the President’s operations in Venezuela and Iran, China has lost access to a quarter of its oil, which it was getting for bargain basement prices in exchange for billions of dollars in loans. Now, China has to come to us for its oil.
If all we’ve accomplished is forcing China to buy oil at market rate—Dayeinu! It would have been enough. But consider the leverage Trump now has in his tariff negotiations with Xi and the deterrent effect this has on Beijing as the Chinese contemplate what their energy supply picture would look like should they ever provoke a major conflict with the U.S..
Operation Epic Fury was always about global dominance. Unless your brain is fried by TDS, that becomes clearer with every passing day.
With a nuclear weapon, Iran was planning to make gas $27 a gallon and not a damn thing anyone could do about it. The fact that the Dems can't see this coming is the problem. So we now control the Straight, no oil out or gas in for Iran. Without that money, they can't pay the IRGC, so they start quitting. Then Mossad arms the opposition, and you have regime change without US boots on the ground.
Excellent article Batya