Editors at National Review Online assess a major challenge in America’s war with Iran.
“You start something,” Napoleon said, “then see what happens.”
Our improvisational commander in chief is often inclined the same way, as we are witnessing in the Iran war. There is a lively debate over critical pieces in the media (although that’s a redundancy) reporting that the administration didn’t plan for the possibility of an Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The administration and its defenders counter that of course there was planning around this well-known and much-feared contingency. Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Iran last June against a possible effort to close the strait, and the administration has cited as a war aim the degradation of Iran’s capacity to do so. But there has been a notable scramble for options as the strait has been effectively closed since the war began, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Trump was extensively briefed about the possibility, but thought the Iranians would capitulate before it became an issue and the U.S. military could handle it regardless.
Now, the effective closure of the strait is threatening the world economy and giving the Iranians leverage it was hard to imagine when they lost their top leaders in the war’s initial strike. The result is an object lesson in why geography still matters, why it was always folly to treat Iran as some distant place unconnected to our national interests, and why control of the seas is as important as it ever was.
About 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through the strait. With traffic slowing to a trickle, the price of oil is up about 40 percent since the beginning of the war. The oil that transits the strait overwhelmingly goes to Asia, but there is obviously a global price that affects the U.S. regardless. The average price of a gallon of gasoline has increased to about $3.70, whereas it was about $2.90 weeks ago. None of this is catastrophic. The price of Brent crude settled above $100 a barrel on Friday. That’s the highest in four years, not in, say, 60 years. But the clock is ticking.
