Trump's Hormuz blockade threat could backfire: analysts
"There is little reason to believe that a blockade would force Iranian capitulation," says fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies
The failure of U.S.-Iran peace talks has left President Donald Trump with several unpalatable options, as analysts say his order to blockade the strategic Strait of Hormuz could further complicate his next move.
Any hopes that U.S. Vice President JD Vance would emerge from the marathon day of negotiations with top Iranian officials with a deal to end a war that has rippled across the Middle East were dashed when he left Pakistan empty-handed.
Protracted talks would undermine Trump’s insistence that Iran has “no cards” left to play, while ramping up military action would expose U.S. forces to heightened risk and could alienate voters — already angry with surging gas prices — ahead of midterm elections.
And the blockade of the strait through which a fifth of the world’s oil moves would do little to ease global economic jitters.
For Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, Trump’s propensity to talk off the cuff and make threats — what he called the president’s “carnival barker” style — leaves his close aides scrambling to chart a path forward.
“He may be simply buying more time to move in more military assets or because he doesn’t know what else to do. I wouldn’t call it a strategy; it is a military-centric approach without strategy,” Katulis told AFP.
Shibley Telhami, a professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland and a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, says the threat of a blockade was “bewildering and seems self-defeating.”
“Iran
already has no trust in Trump,” Telhami told AFP. “Hard to understate what this
makes of what’s left of America’s global credibility.”
‘Untrustworthy
and duplicitous’
Iran’s
powerful Revolutionary Guards on Sunday pledged that Tehran’s enemies would be
trapped in a “deadly vortex” if they were to make a wrong move in the strait.
Danny
Citrinowicz, a fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said
a naval blockade would indeed expose U.S. forces to increased risk.
“There is
little reason to believe that a blockade would force Iranian capitulation. If
anything, Iran’s demonstrated resilience thus far suggests the opposite,”
Citrinowicz wrote on X.
“Iran’s
geographic scale and military capabilities mean that sustaining such an
operation would demand substantial and prolonged allocation of American
resources.”
And such a
prolonged military engagement may not sit well with Americans who say they are
worried and stressed about the conflict, which began in late February.
A CBS News
poll published Sunday revealed that worry, stress and anger far outweigh safety
and confidence when those polled were asked how they feel about the war.
More than 80
percent of respondents said the United States should seek to reopen the strait
and improve global access to oil, which would bring gas prices down, and make
sure that the Iranian people are “free.”
But fewer
than 10 percent said they believed those goals had been achieved.
“I don’t see
how, 40-plus days into this war, that we are safer, that our allies are safer.
I’m not even sure Israel is safer,” Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner said
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” talk show.
“I don’t
understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into
opening it. I don’t get the connection there.”
So if the
blockade is not an answer, what about more negotiations?
Democratic
Senator Tim Kaine suggested that would not be an easy path, given that Trump
removed the U.S. from a 2015 accord reached by Tehran and world powers on
restricting its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
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