WSJ: U.S. threat to blockade Hormuz sets up risky new showdown

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President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. military would blockade the Strait of Hormuz sets up a risky new showdown that could draw American forces into a prolonged struggle to control the strategic chokepoint while compounding the global economic damage caused by the conflict, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ writes.

Hours after U.S. peace talks with Iran broke down in Pakistan, Trump said that the Navy would begin the blockade, “seek and interdict” vessels that had paid Iran to get through the strait, and then start clearing the waterway of sea mines. “He added that any Iranian forces that fired on U.S. troops or commercial shipping would be “BLOWN TO HELL.”

While the U.S. military has the resources and the capabilities to execute such a blockade, current and former U.S. officials and analysts say that sustaining control of the waterway could be far more difficult.

“It’s certainly well within the capacity of the forces that are there to mount a blockade,” said Bryan Clark, a retired naval officer and senior researcher at the Hudson Institute. “Now, if Iran starts shooting at them or shooting at people that are operating these systems, then obviously it gets more difficult…You have to protect them with ships.”

The move opens a volatile new phase in the six-week conflict, shifting from punishing strikes on military targets to an open-ended campaign to police the strait. The prospect of such a blockade could set off a high-stakes battle that tests which side has the higher threshold for pain — Tehran or global markets.

The narrow waterway is exposed to Iran’s coastline, and any operations there will remain vulnerable to mines, drones and attack boats. While Trump has repeatedly touted the U.S. military’s decimation of Iran’s navy, the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still maintains much of its extensive fleet of more nimble speedboats that it uses to control the strait. More than 60% of those fast-attack craft and speedboat vessels remain intact and continue to pose a threat, according to Farzin Nadimi, an Iran-focused senior fellow with the Washington Institute, a U.S.-based think tank.

“This is a militarily manageable effort,” said Mark Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And the operation could be effective even if U.S. forces don’t stop every vessel, just enough ships to “spook the herd” and scare off other shadow-fleet operators to turn up the economic pressure on Iran, which is now heavily dependent on those shipments. “But I don’t think you could do this alone.

“I think this won’t be that much longer”

While Trump said on Sunday that “numerous countries” would be helping U.S. forces impose the blockade, it was still unclear what such a coalition would look like.

The oil shock of Iran paralyzing the strait is already rippling through Asia, where factories are curbing production to save energy and some gas stations are rationing fuel. Some airports across Asia and Europe are beginning to run out of jet fuel, and it could take months for inventories to recover. For countries in the Gulf, the economic damage is shaping up to be the worst in decades, eclipsing the pandemic. Researchers at Capital Economics forecast Qatar’s gross domestic product to shrink by 13% this year, the United Arab Emirates’s by 8% and Saudi Arabia’s by 6.6%.

Trump on Sunday conceded that energy prices might not fall soon and could be higher around the time U.S. voters head to polls in midterm elections this fall. Asked on Fox News if he thinks oil and gas will be lower then, Trump said: “I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be… or maybe a little bit higher. It should be around the same. I think this won’t be that much longer.”

Pic.: Reuters

OPEC output suffers record plunge

OPEC crude production registered a record plunge last month as conflict in the Middle East throttled exports from key members, the group’s data showed.

Output from the organization collapsed by 7.88 million barrels a day to 20.79 million a day in March, driven by losses in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, according to a monthly report from its secretariat seen by Bloomberg News. It’s the steepest drop in data going back to the 1980s.

The conflict between a US-Israeli alliance and Iran has shuttered the Persian Gulf’s vital Strait of Hormuz waterway for six weeks, forcing regional producers to shut in output. It has sent prices for products like jet fuel, diesel and gasoline soaring, threatening the global economy with a wave of inflation.

The plunge surpasses a drop of 6.28 million barrels in May 2020, when the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners slashed output as global fuel demand collapsed during the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s similar to the assessment in Bloomberg’s monthly survey, published last week.

Iraq suffered the biggest decline in March, slumping by 2.56 million barrels a day to 1.63 million a day, according to the report, compiled by the organization’s Vienna-based research department. It was closely followed by Saudi Arabia, down 2.31 million to 7.8 million a day.

Before the war erupted on Feb. 28, key OPEC+ nations had been reviving production shuttered several years ago. At a monthly video conference on April 5, they agreed a symbolic increase for May to continue the process. They’ll meet again on May 3.

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