Trump can strike Iran again. He cannot bomb Hormuz open

A navy can control water. It can’t make a merchant captain sail through it. Warships stop missiles, sure, but no admiral can promise a shipping company that its crew, its cargo and its insurance cover will all survive the next voyage. That gap is the real problem in the US-Iran war, and airstrikes alone won’t close it.

Look at what happened this month. Kpler data shows nearly 20.8 million barrels of oil passed through the strait on 8th October, but only 2.9 million on 11th October. A single day proves little, and Washington disputes independent tracking of the strait anyway. CENTCOM says about 97 percent of ships seeking to transit have done so without being hit. Still, the drop shows how fast a recovery falls apart once crews start to wonder whether passage could be fatal. AFP counted 23 attacks in the first two weeks of October, including six on a single day, the most since the war began, and the IMO says 24 seafarers have died in the area since February. On Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said two loaded tankers caught fire after hitting mines, a claim that has not been independently confirmed.

President Donald Trump has said the US will not strike Iran before the 3rd November  midterms, while insisting the blockade stays in force. Planners are reportedly readying options, including a massive ordnance air blast bomb, should he give the order. The diplomatic track is not dead, but it is stuck. Trump rejected Iran’s seven-day plan to reopen the strait last month and now speaks of “productive discussions.” On Sunday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the offer is still on the table: if Washington accepts Tehran’s conditions, the strait would open within six days and talks would resume on the seventh. Tehran hasn’t paused in the meantime. Reuters reported that Iran has changed how it picks its targets, and UK maritime authorities have logged attack after attack on tankers and container ships this month. The election may delay the next American bombing run. It does nothing about the bill the world is already paying.

Asia pays the most. Before the war, US Energy Information Administration data showed that 89 percent of the crude oil and condensate passing through Hormuz in the first half of 2025 was bound for Asian markets. China, India, Japan and South Korea took nearly three-quarters of it. The strait also carried over a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas.

So when traffic stutters, the damage goes well beyond the oil price. Freight and insurance get dearer, and that lifts the cost of every barrel on arrival. Diesel runs short, which hurts trucking, farming and factories. Gas supplies lurch around, and anyone trying to plan electricity output is left guessing. The International Energy Agency’s October oil market report warned that renewed attacks were threatening the recovery in Gulf exports and that tight diesel markets were already cutting into incomes. And Reuters reported last month that marine fuel in Singapore was still more than 60 percent above prewar prices.

Gulf producers aren’t winning here either. The World Bank forecast this month that GCC economies will shrink by an average of 4.3 percent in 2026, with Qatar down 20.9 percent and Kuwait down 14.6 percent. Its rebound scenario for 2027 assumes the conflict eases by the end of this year, which is a big assumption. If it slips, the numbers get worse. Even Saudi Arabia’s workaround is under strain. Houthi attacks more than halved flows through Bab al-Mandeb in September, pushing Saudi crude back toward Hormuz, where it made up 43 percent of the strait’s oil traffic. Buyers and sellers are both being squeezed, and the Gulf partners Washington says it is defending are paying a good part of the cost.

The usual debate asks what options Trump has left. Keep the blockade and escort ships? Resume strikes? Take Kharg Island? Think about a wider ground war? That’s a list of tools, and a list of tools isn’t a strategy. The real question is whether any of them produces a waterway that commercial operators actually treat as open.

Naval escorts are the mildest option, and they do real work. They deter attacks and keep vital cargo moving. But Iran doesn’t have to beat the US Navy. A few surviving drones, missiles, small boats or mines will do, because they turn every voyage into a gamble. Guarding individual crossings for years isn’t the same as getting normal trade back.

READ: Iran’s IRGC Navy threatens to sink US warships approaching Strait of Hormuz

New air and missile strikes could wreck launch sites, command centres and coastal batteries, and things might go quiet for a while. They might also push Tehran to scatter what weapons it has left and hit softer targets around the Gulf. A Reuters investigation counted at least 135 strikes by Iran and allied forces on 84 infrastructure sites in seven Gulf countries since the war began in February. American force isn’t useless. But Iran can answer damage at home by causing trouble across a much wider regional economy.

Then there’s Kharg Island, which handles roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports. It looks like a tempting prize, a possible bargaining chip. Yet the island sits only about 16 miles off Iran’s coast, well within reach of attack from the mainland. Take the island and you’ve signed up to defend and supply it, and that’s where the trouble starts. A full invasion would be a burden far out of proportion to the goal of keeping ships safe.

Escalation has a cost elsewhere, too. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that replacing the Tomahawk missiles used in this war could take until late 2030. It doesn’t claim Washington is short of weapons for the Iranian fight. The concern is quieter: every high-end munition fired now is one that won’t be there in a Western Pacific crisis. A decision made in the Gulf ends up with a price tag in Asia.

I don’t think any of this means the United States should live with Iranian coercion of shipping. Attacks on civilian vessels have to stop. Seafarers aren’t bargaining chips. Washington and its partners have good reasons to protect navigation and keep up deterrence. But deterrence with no political way out turns into an expensive habit of managing danger without ever ending it.

So what would work? Something small and checkable, to begin with. Attacks on commercial ships would stop at once, and passage would be monitored and open to all vessels equally. Gulf states, shipowners and the relevant international maritime bodies would agree on how to report incidents and keep ships out of each other’s way. The blockade would ease in stages, each step by one side matched by a step from the other and tied to proof that commitments are being kept. Qatari-mediated exchanges show how far apart Washington and Tehran still are, which is exactly why verification and sequencing matter so much. Nuclear questions and wider regional disputes will still need negotiating. Merchant shipping shouldn’t have to wait for them.

Such a deal wouldn’t hand Iran a veto over Hormuz. It would test Tehran’s behaviour while leaving room to respond if attacks start again. And it wouldn’t guarantee peace. What it would offer is something another bombing campaign can’t: a way to tell whether the strait is getting safe enough for ordinary business to come back.

Asia and the Gulf shouldn’t sit and hope. China, India, Japan and South Korea deal with Washington and Tehran in very different ways, yet they share the same stake with the Gulf states that sit on the other side of the strait. They can press both sides in public for transit rules that can be checked, help with monitoring and incident reporting, and make clear to insurers and shipowners that the lanes will be trusted again only once the attacks end. The countries that take most of the strait’s cargo, and those that ship it, have the strongest claim to a say in how it reopens.

Trump can still order more strikes. He can turn up the pressure, grab territory or declare another tactical win. The harder test is whether he can turn military leverage into a lasting opening of the world’s most sensitive energy corridor. For Asia and the Gulf, that’s the difference between one more show of American firepower and a return to economic security.

Hormuz can’t be bombed back to normal. It has to be made safe enough for the world to trust again.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.