The strait that broke Washington’s illusion of control

When the United States and Israel opened their war on Iran on 28^th February by assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the calculation in Washington was simple: overwhelming force would force capitulation. Nearly six months later, that calculation lies in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz, where a tugboat sits sunk, a dozen seafarers are dead or missing, and a waterway that once carried a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade has become the clearest evidence yet that American military dominance does not translate automatically into political victory.

Iran’s response to the assassination of its own supreme leader was not surrender. It was closure. Tehran shut the strait to foreign shipping, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared that any vessel belonging to the United States, Israel, or their allies passing through would be treated as a legitimate target. What followed was not a brief standoff but a war of attrition: US strikes on Iranian ballistic missile infrastructure and drone facilities, Iranian mining operations and drone strikes on commercial vessels, and a naval blockade that has, by turns, been imposed, loosened, and reimposed as diplomacy repeatedly collapsed. By April, US Central Command reported dozens of vessels intercepted and several seized, at a cost to Iran that Washington itself put at roughly $500 million a day — and still the strait did not reopen on American terms.

The toll of that persistence is now visible on Washington’s own ships. Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George HW Bush, some deployed for more than 250 days without relief, have reported food shortages, contaminated water, broken plumbing, and mould in living quarters, according to reporting by Military Times, Task & Purpose, and Navy Times. Family members have described a mental health crisis on board, including cases of sailors attempting to jump overboard amid what one sailor’s wife called severe burnout. The Navy has since begun monitoring sleep and biometric data on roughly 1,600 sailors in response. None of this proves Washington has lost the war. But it is difficult evidence of a military establishment stretched well past what it planned for, in a conflict with no publicly stated exit point — the kind of strain that erodes political patience for a prolonged campaign long before it erodes military capability.

Iran, meanwhile, has used the crisis to assert a claim few expected it could sustain: that it now administers the strait itself. In May, Tehran established a “Persian Gulf Strait Authority,” asserting that no vessel may pass without a permit it issues — a claim that runs directly against the legal reality that the strait’s waters belong jointly to Iran and Oman, and one Muscat has pointedly declined to endorse. Iranian officials, including Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, have been explicit that management of the strait will not revert to its pre-war arrangement. Iran’s demands for reopening the waterway are equally uncompromising: an end to the naval blockade and sanctions, full withdrawal of US forces from the region, war reparations, and the release of frozen Iranian assets. These are not the terms of a state on the verge of collapse. They read, rather, as the terms of a state that believes its adversary is running out of options faster than it is — a calculation shaped by decades of sanctions and confrontation that long predate this war, and one the visible condition of the US fleet does little to discourage.

This is Washington’s dilemma in miniature. Nearly six months of strikes have not reopened a waterway that, before the war, carried roughly 110 vessel transits a day. Superior firepower has proven far better at destroying infrastructure than at compelling a negotiated outcome. Escalation risks drawing in Gulf states and disrupting global energy markets further; withdrawal without a settlement risks being read as defeat. Trump, who has alternated between promising to avoid prolonged foreign entanglements and demonstrating unrelenting force against Tehran, now faces a war with no clear exit and no clear definition of victory — most recently reduced to posting a map online labelling the strait “New US Territory,” rhetoric that speaks to frustration more than to leverage.

For Gulf states, the war has accelerated a hedging strategy that was already under way before the first strikes were fired. On one track, they continue to lean on security cooperation with Washington, still the region’s dominant military presence. On another, they are visibly diversifying: deepening economic ties with China, exploring security and trade relationships across South and Central Asia, and — in Riyadh’s case — formalising the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Pakistan as the Hormuz crisis deepened. Whether that agreement becomes a genuine second pillar of Gulf security, or remains a symbolic hedge, will do much to shape the economic and security architecture of the region in the years ahead.

Pakistan’s position within this realignment is distinctive, and arguably central. Its geography places it at the junction of the Gulf, Iran, China, and Central Asia. Islamabad has hosted talks between Washington and Tehran, formalised a defence pact with Riyadh, maintains a functioning relationship with the current US administration, and has cultivated ties with Iran even as the wider region has polarised around the conflict. It has also worked to stabilise its relationship with Afghanistan, a precondition for the overland connectivity into Central Asia that Pakistan has long sought. Taken together, this is a deliberate attempt to remain a credible partner to several rival poles at once, rather than aligning fully with any one of them — though whether that balancing act can be sustained through a war with no visible end point, and whether it converts into lasting economic or diplomatic advantage for Islamabad, remains genuinely open.

For a Muslim-majority region already reassessing where its security guarantees should come from, Pakistan’s balancing act carries a weight beyond its own borders. A nuclear-armed state with deep ties to the Gulf, a functioning channel to Washington, and a working relationship with both Beijing and Tehran is a rare asset in a region short on actors who can speak credibly to all sides. Whether Islamabad uses that position to help shape a genuine off-ramp from the Hormuz crisis, or simply to accumulate bilateral advantage for itself, will say as much about Pakistan’s regional ambitions as it does about the war itself.

What the Strait of Hormuz crisis has demonstrated, six months in, is not that American power has disappeared. It is that power without a workable political endgame produces exactly this: a blockade that will not hold, a fleet showing visible strain, and a region increasingly convinced that its security cannot depend on Washington’s next decision alone.

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