Gunboat diplomacy ramps up in Hormuz Strait, endangering shaky ceasefire

While the U.S., Iran and Israel have largely halted the barrage of missile, bomb and drone strikes that defined the first month of the war, a tit-for-tat battle is escalating at sea. 

The U.S. military and Iran both seized tankers in international waters this week, and Tehran struck vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump threatened further escalation on Thursday, ordering the Navy to fire on any Iranian ships that are placing mines in the strait, a vital shipping lane that carries about one-fifth of all global crude oil in peacetime. 

The gunboat diplomacy threatens to undermine a ceasefire that has largely held on land, potentially escalating a conflict that has already caused a global energy crisis, experts say. 

“This is sort of this test of wills,” said Jason Campbell, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “The U.S. isn’t carrying out airstrikes in Iran like it was. It is moving to the seas as a means of being able to exert some level of pressure. Iran has done so the same way.” 

He added: “We have what is really a ceasefire mostly in name.” 

The Strait of Hormuz is currently under a so-called double-blockade, with Iran threatening ships from unfriendly nations and Washington turning back most Iran-linked vessels. Trump on Tuesday extended the ceasefire indefinitely to give Tehran time to come to the negotiating table with a peace proposal but said the U.S. would maintain the status quo at sea. 

The conflict is soon to enter its ninth week, surpassing Trump’s original timeline of four to six weeks.

While Washington waits, the U.S. military seized at least three tankers carrying oil from Iran, including one in the Indian Ocean overnight on Wednesday, and the officials said American forces have directed 31 vessels “to turn around or return to port” as part of the blockade. 

“We will continue global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate,” according to a Pentagon post to social media, which showed American forces boarding the M/T Majestic X. The Defense Department has described the tanker as a “sanctioned, stateless vessel.”

Trump also has ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill any boat” that is placing mines in the strait.

“There is to be no hesitation. Additionally, our mine ‘sweepers’ are clearing the Strait right now,” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in turn, has fired on ships to prevent them from sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, attacking three ships in the waterway and seizing two of them Wednesday. 

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and a senior defense adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. pressure campaign could pay off by pushing Iran to make a better deal for Washington. But the strategy also might backfire and harden Iran’s position.

“Revolutionary Guards might become more kinetic. They might start shooting at the ships in the Persian Gulf, for example, those ships there, they’re all stationary, and they’re all very easy to hit,” Cancian told The Hill. “So it’s a gamble. … You could get what you want, but on the other hand, the other side could react in ways that are very unfavorable.”

He said the U.S. could expand its seizure effort and “track down every Iranian anchor that is outside of the Persian Gulf — and there are dozens of them — as a way to put pressure on Iran.”

Such an idea was floated by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Wednesday, when he wrote on the social platform X that he expects the U.S. blockade “will be growing and that it could become global soon.”

But the strait’s closure and subsequent U.S. blockade has further strained global energy resources, with International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol on Thursday telling CNBC that the world is “facing the biggest energy security threat in history.”

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, Trump said Americans can anticipate spending more money on gasoline “for a little while” in exchange for “a deal where our nation and the world is safe from lunatics with nuclear weapons.”

Trump earlier framed the standoff as a waiting game.

“I am possibly the least pressured person ever to be in this position. I have all the time in the World, but Iran doesn’t — The clock is ticking!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday.

In the Oval Office, the president said any agreement to end the conflict would be made on his timeline and terms.

“They’re delaying it because they — we don’t know who to deal with,” Trump said, adding that it won’t be “very long” before the war is over. 

“Trump is looking at, from a political standpoint, two poison apples, and is reluctant to accept that he’s going to have to take a bite of one of them,” Campbell told The Hill. “One of those is his long-time aversion to long, drawn-out, endless wars in the Middle East. And the other one is some sort of a political deal with Tehran that looks worse than the JCPOA [the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran], which he has been obviously a big critic of now for over a decade.” 

He added: “Not wanting to take a bite of either of those apples, the White House appears to be playing for stalling tactics.”

Yet with the strait closed, the economic impacts of the war “are going to get worse very quickly,” Campbell said. 

“Iran has demonstrated an almost incredible ability to withstand pressure and even pain, be it political or economic, certainly over the last few months, but also just over the years,” he said. “I think they feel they have the upper hand here in that court.”

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