Iran’s Hormuz blockade anchored in successful securitization

Iran has long threatened to cut off access to the Strait of Hormuz, a concern featured in nearly every strategic risk-mapping and war-gaming scenario involving Iran and maritime disruptions since the 1970s.

Given the debilitating impact such a move could have on the global economy, Tehran’s potential leverage has always been considerable. Yet nearly five decades of negotiations never saw Iran fully deploy its most potent instrument of power. Its perpetuation owes largely to the differing abilities of Iran and the US to securitize its relevance.

But that calculus has changed with the US-Israel airstrikes of March 2026 and the first-ever comprehensive blockade of the maritime chokepoint. Its perpetuation will depend on the differing abilities of Iran and the US to securitize its relevance.

Securitization is the ability of governments to frame a specific issue as an existential threat, transforming it into a rallying cause that justifies the adoption of any discretionary means to address it, including actions outside established rules, norms and laws.

By making the Strait of Hormuz the focus of its military campaign, the Iranian government appears to have successfully securitized access to the chokepoint as central to its ability to fight for national survival.

Through multi-pronged and asymmetric attacks that have effectively closed the Strait, Iran has successfully weaponized the risk aversion of countries and companies while absorbing considerable costs, on the grounds that control of the chokepoint is the central variable in how this war ends for them.

The US government, by contrast, despite all the military might it is bringing to bear so far, has been unable to securitize the cause of the war to its own population.

Escorting tankers through an active conflict zone does not register as a proximate security concern for the American people — a reality shaped largely by the shift in the oil-for-security calculus since the US became energy self-sufficient through the shale revolution.

The US Navy’s failure so far to break the blockade owes in part to the limited appetite of the American public for casualties in a distant theater, particularly for a cause that feels remote to most Americans, aside from gas prices.

Even a determined Trump administration won’t likely be able to securitize this particular war objective.

Iran’s existential gamble: passing along the pain

Iran’s stakes, on the other hand, are decidedly existential. Uninterrupted passage through the Strait of Hormuz is as important to the Iranian economy as it is to its Persian Gulf neighbors and the wider international community.

While the US$43 billion Iran earned from energy exports in a particularly profitable 2024-25 was modest relative to its Gulf neighbors, this trade — conducted largely through the Strait — accounted for nearly 57% of Iran’s export revenue that year.

This dependence was always an important reason not to block the waterway. Yet the US-Israeli threat has been judged existential enough to warrant deploying this most valuable lever, with Iran calculating that the US-Israeli war campaign would in any case prevent Iranian energy exports — whether through sanctions or physical interdiction.

The calculation, then, has been to absorb the foreign exchange loss while ensuring the pain was shared by other Gulf producers and global supply chains alike. Pushed to the wall, Iran’s decision not to allow the conflict to be contained within its borders is a considered strategy.

Pressuring export-oriented and import-dependent Gulf states enough to compel the US and Israel to halt operations in exchange for restored passage through the Strait gives Tehran a negotiating lever it would otherwise lack.

When the dust settles, Iran will have earned the ire of its Gulf neighbors — a high price in a fragile neighborhood.

Yet any resulting recalibration among Gulf states regarding the costs of strategic partnership with the US and their willingness to normalize ties with Israel, however marginal, would serve Tehran’s long-term objective of weakening American and Israeli partnerships in the region.

US naval capabilities in an asymmetric warfare age

Although the US Navy has escorted vessels through the Strait during the tanker wars of the 1980s, the situation differs materially today on four main counts.

First, the US Navy of the 1980s was a nearly 600-ship fleet facing an adversary with no comparable counter-attack capability.

Today, however, it fields just 294 to 297 ships against an Iran leveraging drone warfare and other asymmetric tools that force larger militaries into wars of attrition. Risking a US carrier and its crew to escort commercial vessels would be seen as a poor calculation in an America heading into the midterms.

Second, Iran’s ability to threaten both commercial vessels and US warships with an inexpensive and abundant supply of mines has set a dangerous precedent. As outlined in a report by the Center for Maritime Strategy, the critical gap in the US Navy’s capabilities is mine countermeasures.

MH-60S Knighthawk helicopters conducting aerial mine sweeps have been found to leave residual material behind, posing risks to vessels even after a sweep is deemed complete.

Iran, Russia and China have collectively acquired the world’s largest stockpile of sea mines, while the US Navy currently operates just four 40-year-old mine countermeasure ships, all expected to be decommissioned by 2027.

Third, the threat surface is far more expansive than in the 1980-90s. Even the territorial waters of mediators such as Oman and the broader Indian Ocean remain viable targets in Iranian calculations, expanding the scope and exposure of any US naval escort mission.

Iran has also deployed inexpensive GPS jamming technology to disrupt navigation along the Strait and into the Indian Ocean.

Fourth, the traditional command-and-control architecture of warfare no longer applies in the Iranian case. Following the killing of the Supreme Leader and, arguably, Qasem Soleimani before him, Iran’s military responses have involved a dispersed mix of sub-national and non-state actors, including proxies such as the Houthis — a structure whose intentions and capabilities the US military must constantly factor into its defensive calculus.

By choking this artery of international trade, Tehran has ensured the Strait’s closure reverberates globally in ways that attribute economic pain to US-Israeli miscalculations. Accepting damage to their own earnings while inviting the wrath of neighbors who championed diplomacy fits no rational-actor model.

Yet it would be an error to judge Iran’s retaliation in the Strait of Hormuz as ill-advised or impulsive. The Iranians are seasoned players of the long game, and their ability to securitize Hormuz is rooted in the recognition that the US cannot do the same. Tehran is banking on this fundamental incongruence to keep the Strait blocked and hold crucial leverage.

Dr. Cauvery Ganapathy is a fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, Middle East, and is based in Dubai. She is a recipient of the Wrangler Pavate Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, serving as visiting research faculty at POLIS and as a senior visiting fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She has previously been a research associate with the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) under the US Department of Defense, with a focus on China in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific.