| Josh Holder/The New York Times |
Iran’s powerful deterrent
By Mark Mazzetti, Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/us/politics/iran-hormuz-strait-trump.html?campaign_id=346&emc=edit_wor_20260421&instance_id=174395&nl=the-world®i_id=60921882&segment_id=218536&user_id=7ef1896561b1bcb78bd182690cb320f1
Iran’s foes have long argued that if the country managed to obtain a nuclear weapon, it would have the ultimate deterrent against future attacks. It turns out Iran already has a powerful deterrent: its own geography.
The U.S.-Israeli war has shown that Iran has the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows.
The shallow strait forces ships to pass within miles of Iran’s mountainous shore, a landscape that favors weapons like missiles and drones that are hard to eliminate completely.
| Agnes Chang and Samuel Granados/The New York Times |
Iran could emerge from the conflict with a blueprint for its hard-line theocratic government to use to keep its adversaries at bay, regardless of any restrictions on the country’s nuclear program.
“Everyone now knows that if there is a conflict in the future, closing the strait will be the first thing in the Iranian textbook,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israel’s military intelligence agency and a current fellow at the Atlantic Council. “You cannot beat geography.”
Iran tried to block the Strait of Hormuz once before in the 1980s, mining both it and the Persian Gulf during its conflict with Iraq. But mine warfare is dangerous — it can take out friendly vessels as well as enemy ones. Drones and missiles are easier to target precisely.
American military and intelligence officials estimate that, after weeks of war, Iran still has about 40 percent of its arsenal of attack drones and upward of 60 percent of its missile launchers — more than enough to hold shipping in the Strait of Hormuz hostage in the future.
Iran’s control over the strait has forced President Trump to announce a naval blockade of his own.
On Friday, Iran declared the waterway open, sending stock markets surging. Then, on Saturday, the country said the strait remained under its “strict control” unless the U.S. ended its own blockade of Iranian ports.
On Sunday, a U.S. Navy destroyer fired on an Iranian cargo ship and ultimately seized it. Iran’s armed forces called it piracy, warning that they would soon retaliate.
“The Strait of Hormuz isn’t social media. If someone blocks you, you can’t just block them back,” one Iranian diplomatic outpost wrote on X last week.
The U.S. is in a precarious position. The strait, which was open before the war, is no longer a fully accessible waterway. Its adversaries have taken notice.
“It’s not clear how the truce between Washington and Tehran will play out. But one thing is certain — Iran has tested its nuclear weapons. It’s called the Strait of Hormuz. Its potential is inexhaustible,” Dmitri Medvedev, a former president of Russia and deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, wrote on social media last week.
Related: The U.S. Navy said it had turned back 27 ships since the start of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz about a week ago.