Hegseth, Trump faces perilous options in the Strait of Hormuz

President Trump is facing a difficult set of options in attempting to reopen the Strait of Hormuz amid Iranian attacks on tankers in the vital shipping route.

Trump on Friday evening said the U.S. had conducted heavy strikes on Kharg Island, Iran’s key oil export location, in what appeared to be a warning of what could come to Tehran. But Trump said he had told the military not to strike Iran’s oil infrastructure. 

Kharg Island lies northwest of the Strait of Hormuz, which has become a focal point of the war. 

Naval escorts to ferry vessels through the waterway could prove costly and risky, while using ground troops to secure the Iranian coast would mark a escalatory and politically unpopular turn in the U.S.-Israeli war in the country.

Either choice, meant to avoid an oil crisis amid soaring global prices, carries a high risk of fresh casualties after 13 U.S. service members have already been killed in the conflict.

Opening the strait by negotiating an end to the war, meanwhile, comes with its own set of issues.

That avenue leaves the Iranian regime in place and nuclear material in its possession, making it hard for the U.S. to declare victory based on Trump’s own stated goals. 

Steven Wills, a navalist for the Center for Maritime Strategy and an expert on U.S. Navy strategy and policy, said the military has a few options: capture Kharg Island — which handles 90 percent of Iran’s oil shipments — to compel the regime to pause its choking off the strait; or the Navy could do escort missions through the passage, but only if the mines are cleared. 

“It’s hard, it’s messy, you’ve got to sort one mine at a time. That’s a more difficult challenge for the Navy to sort, I think,” Wills said in an interview with The Hill on Friday. 

Erik Bethel, general partner at Mare Liberum and a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, said to ensure the safe passage of tankers, the U.S. military needs to wipe out not only Iran’s navy and airplanes, but also the drones. 

“It’s not that we don’t have the best Navy in the world. It’s that we face asymmetric actions from our adversaries. We’re shooting down $50,000 drones with multi-million dollar missiles. We’re taking a multi-100, billion-dollar, flotilla through the straits, and it only takes like one or two, kamikaze drone boats, or one or two, you know, aerial drones, to cause damage,” Bethel said in an interview with The Hill on Friday. 

Asked Friday morning about providing escorts to oil tankers through the strait, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth downplayed concerns of Iranian attacks, telling reporters that the Pentagon “has been dealing with it.”

Wills said the U.S. has mine-sweeping capability in the region with littoral combat ship-based, unmanned and helicopter-based mine hunting systems. One asset the military is missing is the retired Sikorsky MH-53 Pave Low, a long-range special operations helicopter that was capable hunting, sweeping and neutralizing mines. 

“Big helicopter towing a tow sled that can just mow the lawn, essentially, and mine sweep very quickly and very effectively,” Wills said. 

The U.S. military is reportedly moving roughly 2,500 Marines and up to three warships to the region from the Indo-Pacific region, though it is unclear how they would be used. 

A scenario where they could be used to clear the strait could play out on islands along the waterway on both sides of the strait, avoiding putting boots on the ground on mainland Iran, according to Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

“On the Iranian side there’s some islands that are just offshore and you could land troops ashore there, take control of that territory and then essentially use them to engage any threats that emerge on the shoreline on Iran’s side of the strait,” Clark told The Hill. 

Forces placed on the opposite side of the waterway on islands off Oman could aid with any threats that emerge.

But the inhabitable nature of the island means troops will have to bring everything needed, making it a complicated expeditionary operation, he noted. 

“And in theory the Iranians would oppose that landing so there may be some damage and casualties as you take that territory,” Clark said. “Obviously, the Iranians’ ability to shoot back is pretty reduced, but they might have some remaining missiles and rockets and drones that they would be able to launch at incoming troops that are trying to set up shop on these islands.”

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, speaking alongside Hegseth on Friday, said the military was prioritizing efforts to counter Iran’s capabilities to mine the crucial corridor before beginning to escort tankers through a “tactically complex environment.” 

Hegseth said the U.S. was not aware of any mines being laid so far in the strait, which typically facilitates about 20 percent of the global oil trade.

Iran has over 5,000 naval mines — one of the largest such stocks in the world — that can quickly deploy in the Strait of Hormuz using high-speed small boats, a Defense Intelligence Agency 2019 report said.  

The types range from World War 2-era contact mines that go off once the vessels hit their spike to more advanced ones, such as bottom influence mines that have counters on them. 

“It has a magnetic checker on it. One vessel sails over two vessel sales over above, and then the bottom line explodes for the third vessel,” Wills said. 

Mines pose a bigger danger to U.S. assets in the strait than drones, as the Navy has gotten better in recent years at shooting them down, notably during the operation against the Houthis, Wills argued.

Bethel said he was more concerned about Iran’s Shahed-136 drones because they can be launched hundreds of miles away and still inflict substantial damage. 

“Because unlike a mine, which you can take a mine sweeper and remove, you can launch a drone from 500 miles away, and it could be in a garage somewhere or and it just flies and hits a target,” Bethel said in an interview with The Hill on Friday. 

Ret. Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, who served as commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, said both drones and mines pose challenges, but noted that the number of drones Iran is employing now for retaliation compared to the early days of the war has dropped 

“Not that some don’t get through and they can’t hit civilian targets. I’m not saying that, but you’ll see that their ability to do that is diminishing,” Donegan said in an interview. 

When asked when the conflict would be over, Trump told Fox News Brian Kilmeade on Friday, “When I feel it. When I feel it in my bones.”

Donegan said that Iran’s capabilities to litter the strait with mines have dwindled compared to when the war broke out, as Tehran has suffered substantial military losses

“Now, can you put a mine in the water and mines in the water? Absolutely, as we’ve seen in conflict for hundreds of years, the ability to throw mines here and there out of a simple boat is not a hard task, right,” Donegan, now a Distinguished Military Fellow at the Middle East Institute, told The Hill on Friday. 

“But then again, those are going to be less disruptive than a planned minefield that’s in the right place, that’s with the right weapons,” he said, adding that it is unlikely for Iranian ships to “march out” into the Strait now to place the mines without them “getting destroyed.” 

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