Why we CAN'T reopen the Strait of Hormuz [View all]

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And now Red Sea shipping will be shut down as well by the Houthis. We are really screwed.

“Shippers are not going to go back in—particularly large shipping firms—until they both have insurance and until they see the US Navy doing repeated freedom of navigation transits through the Strait,” Michael Knights, a veteran IRGC analyst, told Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “The US Navy has to go first. It has to show it’s willing to put its ships in the Strait before anyone will put a tanker or an LNG carrier. The problem is the US Navy isn’t doing that...”

The Navy’s reticence may be because Trump doesn’t want to risk seeing one of his ships blown up by an Iranian ballistic missile that can be fired from deep within the mountainous terrain that borders the Strait. “President Trump has been made to understand by the Navy, I’m sure, that he stands a high chance of seeing a US warship on fire if he moves one into the Strait of Hormuz,” Knights said.

Meanwhile, a second front has opened. The Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel on Saturday, signaling that one of Iran’s most powerful allies has entered the conflict. “The decision by the Houthis to join the broader Middle East conflict marks a serious and deeply concerning escalation,” Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemen analyst at Chatham House, told The Financial Times.

The timing could not be worse for global shipping. With the Strait of Hormuz shut, Saudi Arabia has been pumping oil across the desert by pipeline to Red Sea terminals — the only remaining route for Gulf exports to reach world markets. The Houthis control the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow chokepoint at the southern end of the Red Sea. A tanker queue forming in the Red Sea is exactly the kind of target the Houthis spent two years learning how to hit.

https://open.substack.com/pub/theiceman/p/why-the-most-powerful-navy-in-the?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email