The United States and its allies must guarantee freedom of navigation in the world’s most critical maritime chokepoint.

The military weakening of Iran has created a strategic opening that the United States and its partners cannot afford to squander. While recent operations have significantly degraded Tehran’s conventional military capabilities, the challenge now extends beyond battlefield success. The central question is whether the international community can establish a durable security framework that protects one of the world’s most vital waterways: the Strait of Hormuz.

For decades, the narrow passage connecting the Persian Gulf to global markets has remained vulnerable to disruption by the Iranian regime and its proxies. Long before recent conflicts, Tehran relied on a combination of naval harassment, missile threats, mines, and asymmetric tactics to hold international commerce hostage. The threat was never limited to regional rivals. It was directed at the global economy itself.

The Strait of Hormuz carries a substantial share of the world’s energy exports and remains indispensable to international trade. Any power capable of threatening shipping through the strait gains leverage far beyond its borders. That reality has made Iran’s repeated attempts to intimidate commercial traffic a........

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