New York : President Donald Trump plans to get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, by blockading it. On April 12, soon after the collapse of the 21-hour Islamabad peace talks between Iran and the US, Trump said he would be “blockading any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”
The US Navy’s Commander’s handbook on the law of naval operations, 2022 defines blockade as ’a belligerent operation to prevent vessels and/or aircraft of all States, enemy and neutral, from entering or exiting specified ports, airfields, or coastal areas belonging to, occupied by, or under the control of an enemy State. Trump said that Iran had violated the key precondition of the talks – to keep the strait of Hormuz open. Iran did reopen the strait, but with a twist.
Shipping authorities call the new route a ‘Tehran toll booth’ and believe Iran is charging a toll on ships entering or leaving the strait. Less than a dozen merchant ships have crossed this new passage since the ceasefire. It is not known if they paid a toll to Iran. The US now aims at a counter- blockade. It will block vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports while keeping the strait open for vessels transiting the strait.
Iran and Oman are the only two Persian Gulf nations which have access to the Arabian Sea. Iran depends on the sea lanes to export oil and gas and, as US media reports indicated recently, for Chinese imports of shipments of precursor chemicals like sodium petrochlorate, used to make solid booster fuel for ballistic missiles. A US blockade will turn Iran into a land-locked country. On April 12, two US Navy warships transited the strait, carrying out a mine clearance operation. These are the first US warships to transit the strait since the war began on February 28.
These units will be joined by a second CSG, the USS Ronald Reagan CSG, and the USS Boxer ARG. That gives Trump two CSGs and two ARGs, a grouping of over 20 warships and over 200 aircraft, for demining and blockading. Modern submarine warfare was born in a naval blockade. The Union blockaded Confederate ports during the American Civil War (1861-1865), deploying warships off the coast of Confederate ports to enforce it. In 1864, a Confederate submarine HL Hunley attacked the USS Housatonic with a spar torpedo (a harpoon with an explosive charge) in Charleston harbour.
Iran has the modern avatars of the Hunley, a fleet of around 20 Ghadir-class midget submarines, indigenously built to a North Korean design. Each submarine is over 125 tons, has a crew of 7 and carries two 533 mm torpedoes. Iran also has several anti-ship ballistic missiles and drones. It remains to be seen whether it will attempt any blockade-breaking tactics. A ship’s a fool to fight a fort, a saying incorrectly attributed to Lord Horatio Nelson.
Iran has a powerful fort, missiles, drones, sea mines and gunboats, but it has no ability to protect ships sailing further away from the Persian Gulf because most of its ocean-going navy was sunk by the US. All it can hope to do is target the US Navy operating in close proximity to the strait. It could even do what it threatened in case of a US ground invasion, unleash free-floating sea mines, among the most disruptive naval weapons.
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