The Iranians have now effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, and President Donald Trump faces an important decision about whether to force its opening.
Declaring victory and walking away now would leave the strategic initiative to control traffic in the Strait in the hands of the Iranians, who show no particular appetite to allow commercial traffic through at the moment. The new Supreme Leader’s inaugural statement Thursday morning declared the closure of the strait as Iran’s official policy. The statement also lingered at some length on Mojtaba Khamenei’s dead father, Ali Khamenei, his wife, and his sister, all killed on the first day of the war: These are not promising signals of a coming diplomatic rapprochement.
The good news for the administration is that the strait can be opened through military means. The problem is that getting civilian traffic safely underway in the narrow waterway will likely only begin weeks from now, at best.
The United States and its navy have been here before. In 1987–88, the Reagan administration also faced Iranian efforts to target shipping in the Persian Gulf and mine vulnerable choke points like the Strait of Hormuz. In a yearlong operation dubbed Earnest Will, America ran an extensive convoy operation guarding traffic between Kuwait and the Gulf of Oman. Dozens of major U.S. warships of all types were involved at any given time, and when the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine and almost sank while participating, President Ronald Reagan ordered Operation Praying Mantis, an attack on Iranian naval forces that seemed dramatic at the time, but compared to 2026’s campaign was little more than a warm-up.
