{"id":538138,"date":"2026-03-13T16:45:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538138\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T16:45:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T16:45:21","slug":"ghost-of-gallipoli-us-warships-cannot-control-the-strait-of-hormuz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538138\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghost of Gallipoli: US warships cannot control the Strait of Hormuz"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

One factor should dominate global strategic policymaking today: that the Strait of Hormuz will re-open only with the consent of the Iranian government. No amount of US naval power can either force passage or safeguard transit.<\/p>\n

So Raelene Lockhorst\u2019s Strategist article<\/a> on 9 March on the effect of its closure on Australia should be taken with deadly seriousness, now, by Australian policy makers.<\/p>\n

On the surface, access through the Strait of Hormuz appears to be a naval challenge. And on the surface, the United States Navy has the upper hand. It has almost a fifth<\/a> of its carrier fleet in the region\u2014the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Gerald R Ford\u2014plus a huge escort force. The US military can eliminate all Iranian maritime activity. To date, it appears to have sunk 30 Iranian vessels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in naval doctrine, sea denial is one thing; sea control is quite another.<\/p>\n

The problem is this: the US Navy can deny the Iranians the ability to operate on the waters of the strait\u2014or anywhere for that matter\u2014but the US Navy cannot control the strait itself. Iran can deploy cheap anti-ship weaponry along the littoral of the strait with far greater ease and assurance than modern naval forces can reliably counter them. Dumb mass will defeat cutting-edge quality.<\/p>\n

On 12 March, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US Navy would probably start escorting merchant ships through the strait this month. This will hardly be sustainable: the interceptor cells and anti-missile gun magazines on US destroyers and frigates will empty more rapidly and expensively than Iranian arsenals.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s task is not militarily taxing, anyway. Iran needs only to target the tankers, which can be hit with little accuracy. Iran\u2019s forces can ignore the escorts. Just a few hits on a few tankers are enough to force<\/a> mercantile insurers to bail out. According to Britain\u2019s Maritime Trade Operations Centre, Iran has so far attacked 16 vessels in the strait,<\/a> the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Gulf. The \u00a0strait is effectively closed.<\/p>\n

Given the strong tides through the strait, Iran can also float mines into the waters from various points on the littoral. It doesn\u2019t have to load them onto mine-laying vessels (16 of which the US claims to have sunk<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So, in the unlikely event the US Navy did attempt convoy, it would first need to destroy land-based anti-ship capabilities and operations on the Iranian side of the strait.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s at this point the Dardanelles analogy becomes operative. The only reason the Gallipoli campaign was attempted in 1915 was because the most powerful navies of the day had failed to force a passage through the narrow Dardanelles, the shores of which were controlled by Ottoman forces. In this case, even 18 battleships\u2014including the 381-mm guns of the new battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth\u2014failed to sufficiently suppress defensive artillery.<\/p>\n

In constricted waters, the combination of basic artillery and basic naval mines inflicted such damage on the world\u2019s most advanced navy and its French ally that they had to retire.<\/p>\n

So, an attempt to force passage will present the United States with the same fallback option that Britain and France had in 1915: to take the littoral by force. But occupying the Gallipoli peninsular doesn\u2019t begin to compare with occupying more than 150\u00a0km of Iranian shoreline, from Qeshm island in the west to the Port of Bandar Abas and down the coast to Koo Mobarak, where the strait widens.<\/p>\n

There is no defensible line that US forces could ever secure. The attempt would be Gallipoli times 10, with the difference that the Iranians could always pull back to interior lines of defence. It is inconceivable that the US would try.<\/p>\n

Are there alternatives? US air forces could continue to reduce Iran\u2019s ability to make drones and missiles. But even if that works, there are substitutes. Russia has every incentive to keep the strait closed, since its own hydrocarbons are becoming more valuable with every passing day. Russia is strategically on-side with Iran\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

Russia also has the kit to help. It has spent four years contracting the development cycles of cheap drones and non-smart missiles. It can fly or ship hundreds of such munitions across the Caspian Sea. Even if US drones could interdict passage, an attempt would constitute a direct attack on Russian forces. So that won\u2019t happen either.<\/p>\n

Consequently, Iran is in a far stronger position than might appear. It just has to persist\u2014while the damage to Asian and European economies accumulates. As a huge energy exporter, the US has autarkic options; Asia and Europe do not. This means the US is in a far stronger position too, compared with its beleaguered allies.<\/p>\n

And so back to Lockhorst\u2019s analysis. Australia should start planning now for restricted supply of essential fuels. The war will not be over when the US stops bombing; it will be over when Iran allows free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. And there is nothing the US military can do to change that equation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One factor should dominate global strategic policymaking today: that the Strait of Hormuz will re-open only with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-538138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}