Iran War Topic Week

By Ludovico Domini

Introduction

The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis exposes the inadequacy of some classical geopolitical frameworks. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s sea power, centered on blue-water naval supremacy, and Halford Mackinder’s land power, which focuses on Eurasian continental hegemony, are framed in a dualistic tension with one another. This framing proves insufficient in an era of advanced globalization and asymmetric warfare. This conflict demonstrates how a regional power can neutralize a conventional navy through Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) systems, making control of a chokepoint more decisive than fleet superiority.

This essay introduces the concept of archipelagic-reticular power: whoever governs strategic straits and logistical nodes dominates Nicholas Spykman’s Rimland, or the densely populated, resource-rich coastal strip that encircles the Eurasian landmass. And whoever dominates the Rimland, controls the destinies of Eurasia. Grounded in the geopolitical theories of François Gipouloux, Guiseppe Fioravanzo, and Parag Khanna, this article proposes a modern rewriting of Spykman’s maxim: Who controls the chokepoints and the nodal hubs rules the Rimland; who connects Eurasia commands the destinies of the world.

Hormuz as a Theoretical Testing Ground

The Mahan-Mackinder dichotomy has shaped maritime politics for over a century. Mahan identified three pillars of sea power: commanding the open ocean to deny its use to adversaries, achieving fleet supremacy through decisive battle, and controlling maritime lines of communication and chokepoints to protect one’s own trade while blockading the enemy’s.

For Mahan, therefore, “…the control of the sea, and especially of those great lines of communication along which the trade of a nation or of the world passes, is the central element of maritime power,” and, based on these assumptions, we could say that the third point represents a fraction of what today might be defined as part of archipelagic-reticular power.¹

Mackinder, on the contrary, entrusted the destiny of the world to the control of the Eurasian Heartland, a continental fortress theoretically inaccessible to naval power. For Mackinder, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: Who rules the World-Island commands the World.”²

China’s Belt and Road Initiative challenges traditional territorial dominance, reinterpreting Mackinder’s Heartland not as a physically controlled fortress but as a network of strategic nodes and communication lines.

While Mahan saw the sea as the path to global power, Mackinder recognized that railways and land transport could match or surpass maritime mobility, making continental reach equally decisive. This dualism defined great power strategy throughout much of the 20th century, functioning as a foundational formula for geopolitical competition.

The Cold War marked a turning point when Spykman’s Rimland theory superseded Mackinder’s Heartland model. Rather than the continental interior, Spykman assigned strategic primacy to Eurasia’s coastal fringes, or a zone of friction between sea and land power. Controlling the Rimland meant containing continental powers and denying them ocean access, forming the theoretical backbone of America’s Cold War containment strategy against the USSR.

Yet Spykman’s framework remained fundamentally anchored to maritime supremacy, summarized as, “Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world”.³

Are we still at this point today, or do the events that unfolded in Hormuz confront us with questions that old benchmarks cannot help us answer? Spykman himself had theorized that, “…the rimland of the Eurasian land mass must be viewed as an intermediate region, situated as it is between the heartland and the marginal sea. It functions as a vast buffer zone of conflict between sea power and land power.”⁴ Yet today the Rimland is no longer a buffer zone. It represents strategic centrality itself.

Advanced globalization, the digital revolution, and urbanization have fundamentally eroded traditional geopolitical paradigms. Power no longer stems from territorial possession or naval patrolling, but from designing, managing, and protecting interconnected networks of strategic nodes. This is the logic of archipelagic-reticular power.

Operation Epic Fury, launched on February 28, 2026, transformed the Strait of Hormuz into a living geopolitical laboratory. Within a corridor barely thirty kilometers wide, through which roughly one-fifth of global crude oil and one-quarter of LNG transit, the crisis offers precise empirical validation of archipelagic-reticular theory. This is no anomaly. It signals a definitive paradigm shift.

The node worth more than a fleet: the crisis of Mahanian strategic doctrine

Mahan’s doctrine equates naval supremacy with global power. The strongest fleet controls the seas and, with them, world trade. The Hormuz crisis has empirically and brutally exposed the inadequacy of this assumption.

Iran, without a competitive conventional navy, demonstrated that controlling one strategic node suffices to neutralize U.S. power projection. Through A2/AD assets such as fast attack craft, drone swarms, mines, and electronic warfare,  it rendered Hormuz transit economically unsustainable, effectively checkmating the world’s most advanced fleet.⁵

The most telling data lies in the cost ratio. Each Shahed drone, with a price tag fluctuating between twenty thousand and fifty thousand dollars, consumed a PAC-3 interceptor missile valued at approximately four million dollars, resulting in a multiplier of 130 to 1. In forty days, the Pentagon expended an estimated 28 to 35 billion dollars on weapons and ammunition.⁶

Hormuz reveals a paradigm crisis. Classical naval power was conceived to dominate open spaces, not to defend a bottleneck where the very geometry of the operational theater nullifies the advantages of qualitative superiority. In a thirty-kilometer corridor, the size of the fleet does not matter: what matters is who controls the node. ⁷

The theoretical construction of archipelagic-reticular power

The literature on archipelagic power, through the distinct formulations of François Gipouloux, Giuseppe Fioravanzo, and Parag Khanna, had already identified the structures that the events in Hormuz have brought to light. The thought of these three authors is synthesized below.

François Gipouloux

French economist François Gipouloux offers one of the most systematic explanations of archipelagic-reticular power. He identifies a transnational maritime corridor stretching from Vladivostok to Singapore, encompassing the Yellow Sea, South China Sea, and Celebes Sea. He describes it not as a geopolitical periphery, but as an interconnected archipelago of city-states and port hubs.

Gipouloux contrasts two models of power. The first is continental power, characterized by rigid territorial control, autarky, and bureaucratic centralization. The second is archipelagic power, defined by flexibility, local autonomy, commercial flows, and trade institutions built organically from below. In this framework the city-state,  governed by adaptive financial systems, emerges as a compelling alternative to the centralized nation-state.

For Gipouloux, archipelagic-reticular power represents the triumph of maritime fluidity over territorial rigidity. Sovereignty is no longer measured in square kilometers of controlled land, but in a node’s capacity to connect to global networks of goods, capital, and information. Applied to the Hormuz crisis, this framework proves remarkably prescient: strategic chokepoints and urban-commercial hubs, rather than vast territories or battle fleets, determine who truly commands the arteries of global power.

According to François Gipouloux, a reticular power system can be defined as, “…that power in which sovereignty and influence are not exercised through the homogenous control of vast land borders, but rather through the capacity to connect autonomous urban ‘islands’ and port hubs arranged along a maritime corridor. This power is fueled by the fluidity of flows (mercantile, financial, and migratory), coordinated by transnational trust networks (such as diasporas), and manifests itself through the competition and complementarity of major hub-cities capable of evading, or reshaping, the bureaucratic constraints of territorial empires.”⁸

Giuseppe Fioravanzo

In a 1943 text, Admiral Giuseppe Fioravanzo, an officer of profound strategic culture within the Italian Navy, developed the theory of the “four Mediterraneans.” He based his premise on the evaluation of the Mediterranean as a universal geopolitical category, specifically a closed or semi-closed sea, hemmed in by large continental landmasses, which acts as a hinge for global trade and fleets. Through this lens, he sought to identify common features in three other similar seas. For him, these became the American Mediterranean, the Australasian Mediterranean, and the Japanese Mediterranean. According to Fioravanzo, control of these maritime hinges determines global supremacy. Whoever dominates the compulsory passages (chokepoints) of these seas, controls the global lines of communication.

In the case of the Mediterranean, Fioravanzo’s vision was entirely innovative, as the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf were treated as integral and constituent parts of what he termed the “Latin Mediterranean” (or the Euro-Asiatic-African maritime system), which the Italian Navy today defines as the “Wider Mediterranean” (Mediterraneo Allargato).

For Fioravanzo, a sea qualifies geopolitically as a “Mediterranean” if it meets specific criteria: it must be a closed or semi-closed sea, encompassed by continental masses, whose entry and exit points are regulated by chokepoints.

Thus, the Red Sea represents a narrow maritime corridor between two continents (Africa and Asia), locked by Suez to the north and Bab el-Mandeb to the south, becoming a natural and indispensable extension of the classical Mediterranean after the cutting of the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf is a semi-closed basin, a strategic dead end sealed by the Strait of Hormuz, which represents the nexus of the energy and commercial resources of the Eurasian landmass.⁹

Parag Khanna

Parag Khanna’s Connectography (2016) represents the contemporary theoretical apex of reticular geopolitical thinking. Where Gipouloux applied network logic to Asian history and Fioravanzo mapped global maritime geometries, Khanna reframes the entire world order: states are no longer defined by rigid borders but by their capacity to attract, move, or block flows of goods, data, energy, and people.

In Khanna’s framework, territorial sovereignty becomes secondary to connectivity. What matters is not how much land a state controls, but whether it can guarantee the continuity and speed of its connections. Pipelines, trade routes, submarine fiber-optic cables, and digital highways increasingly outweigh national frontiers as determinants of power. True dominance belongs to those who govern the nodes and cables through which contemporary civilization flows.

The Hormuz crisis provides perfect empirical validation. Hundreds of stranded vessels, millions of barrels removed from global markets within days, and a sharp spike in Brent crude prices collectively demonstrate that disrupting a single chokepoint triggers not a local incident but a systemic global shock. This is the logic of “supply chain warfare.” Such conflicts are not fought to occupy enemy capitals, but to disrupt, divert, or monopolize the vital flows upon which adversaries’ economic survival depends.

From this emerges Khanna’s pivotal concept of nodal power, which supplants traditional territorial hegemony: power accrues to whoever controls the compulsory transit points of the interconnected global ecosystem. The nodes through which the modern world inevitably passes become key sources of global strength. The Strait of Hormuz, in this light, is not merely a waterway but the ultimate expression of nodal power in action. Khanna expresses it thusly: “The capacity of a geopolitical actor or an infrastructural hub (global city, port, technology district, maritime strait) to exercise global systemic influence not through territorial sovereignty, but through its position of centrality, density, and irreplaceability within global networks and supply chains.”¹⁰

Nodal power belongs to those controlling the crossroads where global flows of goods, capital, data, and energy converge. Rather than dominating surrounding territory, nodal powers accelerate, redirect, or block globalization’s flows, making other network nodes structurally dependent. Consequently, connectivity surpasses size. Small states can wield disproportionate influence, diversification builds resilience, and deep supply chain integration generates leverage, bargaining power, and geopolitical attraction.

Archipelagic-reticular power: a definition

After analyzing three thinkers who have outlined a series of interesting theories, it is also worth referencing the thought published in a book edited by the Italian Navy, Mediterranei globali (Global Mediterraneans), which synthesized several concepts of immense strategic significance.¹¹

The view of “mediterraneans” represent the pulse of the transition toward a multipolar world. They are spaces saturated with friction where asymmetric threats and symmetric competitions between great powers coexist. These narrow seas are configured in such a way that if a single point becomes destabilized, the effects reverberate on a global scale. The maritime dimension merges with cyber, terrestrial, and energy domains, and strategic control can only be achieved by managing the complexity of the geopolitical interactions present within the basin.¹²

The world’s great “mediterraneans” (the Euro-Afro-Asian, the Caribbean, the South China Sea, etc.) are not merely geographical or mercantile spaces, but actual regional security complexes. This means that the defense structures and threat perceptions of the states bordering them (or projecting power into them) are so inextricably interconnected that the security of one cannot be separated from that of the others.

Moreover, a paradox of globalization emerges: while economic flows are global, security dynamics are becoming heavily regionalized. Mediterraneans become the primary arenas in which this regionalization crystallizes. The “Wider Mediterranean” (Mediterraneo allargato) is no longer just an operational guideline for the Italian Navy, but the scientific description of a regional security complex that links the historical Mediterranean to the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and out into the Western Indian Ocean. Within this space, geopolitical anarchy forces actors to forge fluid alliances and confront shared threats, transforming the basin into a barometer of global stability.¹³

In light of the analyses conducted thus far, the concept of archipelagic-reticular power can be defined as the capacity of a geopolitical actor to exercise systemic influence not through the strategic management of nodes and chokepoints positioned along interconnected maritime and terrestrial corridors.

This power is fueled by the fluidity of flows (mercantile, financial, energy, and informational), solidifies through the node’s position of centrality and irreplaceability within global networks, and expresses itself in the ability to accelerate, redirect, or block the supply chains upon which the economic survival of adversaries depends.

Sovereignty, within this logic, is measured not in square kilometers but in connectivity: whoever controls the compulsory crossroads commands the flows. Whoever commands the flows governs the system.

Conclusions

The Strait of Hormuz crisis has done more than disrupt global energy markets. It has exposed the structural obsolescence of the strategic frameworks that governed great power competition for over a century. Mahan’s battle fleet, Mackinder’s Heartland, and even Spykman’s Rimland were conceived for a world where power was measured in territory controlled and tonnage deployed. That world no longer exists.

Robert Kagan has warned that Washington is heading toward total defeat in its confrontation with Iran, a setback he describes as one that, “… can neither be repaired nor ignored.” The admission is remarkable precisely because of its source: a lifelong architect of American military primacy acknowledging that if Iran ends this conflict in control of the strait, it completely changes the situation in the Gulf, giving Tehran enormous leverage not only with the United States but with the rest of the world.¹⁴

This outcome is not an anomaly. It is the logical consequence of a paradigm shift that the theoretical framework of archipelagic-reticular power had already anticipated. Iran did not need a blue-water navy to checkmate the most advanced fleet in history. It needed only to control one irreplaceable node. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region, the roles of China and Russia are strengthened, and the role of the United States substantially diminished.

The concept of archipelagic-reticular power proposed in this essay is not merely a theoretical rewriting of Spykman. It is a response to an empirical reality that classical frameworks cannot explain. A regional power, armed with drones costing tens of thousands of dollars, has neutralized billions in conventional military investment. This validates Gipouloux’s fluidity over rigidity, Khanna’s nodal power over territorial sovereignty, Fioravanzo’s chokepoint centrality, and the Italian Navy’s regional security complexes as the true arenas of 21st-century competition.

Whoever controls the chokepoints and the nodal hubs rules the Rimland. Who connects Eurasia commands the destinies of the world. Hormuz has turned this proposition from theory into fact. The paradigm has shifted. The question now is whether Western strategic thought is ready to follow.

Ludovico Domini is a Senior Civil Servant and Lieutenant Junior Grade, Italian Navy Reserve. He holds a Master of Laws from the University of Bologna, and a postgraduate Master in Strategic Studies and International Security from Venezia Ca’ Foscari University.

He is co-founder of the Center for Geopolitical and Strategic Maritime Studies (CESMAR), where he continues to serve as an analyst in operational planning, national logistics, lawfare and research assistant in naval power, geopolitics and international security.

During his career in the Navy, he served on board Cavour aircraft carrier as legal assistant of the Commander-in-Chief Naval Fleet, at the Navy Historical Office as researcher and at the Naval Staff College in Venice as assistant to the Director of Courses.

References

1.The sentence represents a concise paraphrase of Mahan’s thought, developed on the basis of the Italian edition published by the Historical Office of the Italian Navy (Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare, 1994), specifically within the introductory chapters and the discussion on maritime trade. Mahan, Alfred Thayer, L’influenza del potere marittimo sulla storia (1660–1783) [The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783], Trans. from English by Admiral Antonio Flamigni. Rome: Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare, 1994.

2. Mackinder, H. J., Democratic ideals and reality: A study in the politics of reconstruction, London, UK, Constable and Company, 1919, p. 23.

3. Spykman Nicholas J., The Geography of the Peace, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1944, p.43.

4. Ibid.

5. Galdorisi, Jerry, e Paul McLeary. 2026. «Iran’s Anti-Access and Area Denial Strategy Is Cruder Than China’s But Still Dangerous». War on the Rocks, 7 aprile 2026.

6. Cancian, Mark F. 2026. Last Rounds? Status of Key Munitions at the Iran War Ceasefire. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 21 aprile 2026.

7. Ibid.

8. Gipouloux François, La Méditerranée asiatique. Villes portuaires et réseaux marchands en Chine, au Japon et en Asie du Sud-Est, XVIe-XXIe siècle, CNRS Éditions (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), Parigi, 2009, pp. 15-23.

9. Fioravanzo, Giuseppe, Il Mediterraneo centro strategico del mondo, Roma, Ministero della Marina, 1943.

10. Khanna, Parag, Connectography: Le mappe del futuro ordine mondiale, Roma, Fazi Editore, 2016.

11. Various Authors, Mediterranei globali. Politiche e strategie per i «mari ristretti», Rome, Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2025.

12. Ibid., pp. 71-83.

13. Ibid., pp. 263-291.

14. Kagan, Robert, Checkmate in Iran, The Atlantic, may 10 2026.

Featured Image: A satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. (Wikimedia Commons)

Iran War Topic Week

By Paul Viscovich, CDR, USN (Ret.)

After four months into the conflict, Iran is defiantly refusing to capitulate. This “four week war” now threatens to become another drawn-out conflict. Despite American tactical successes, Tehran has seized control of the Strait of Hormuz and holds the strategic upper hand. Closing the Strait has severely restricted the flow of critically needed oil and agricultural fertilizer, threatening an economic crisis and worldwide famine. Allies, friends, and opponents alike are losing confidence in American leadership and are applying increasing pressure on Washington to resolve this crisis one way or another.

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz poses formidable challenges. It is approximately 90 nautical miles long and 21 nautical miles wide across at its narrowest point. Transiting ships are exposed to mining, close-range missile, fast patrol boat and drone swarm attacks from roughly 130 degrees throughout their course. On March 10, Tehran effectively closed the Strait by announcing it had mined the shipping channels. Whether or not they did, or how extensive these minefields were, is less important than the threat itself and how effectively it shaped behavior. Iran has also fired on and damaged merchant shipping attempting to run the gauntlet.

In early May, as many as 2,000 merchant ships were reported trapped in the Persian Gulf. This number has decreased in recent weeks, reportedly because some nations are obtaining diplomatic clearance from Tehran for their ships to transit unmolested. The Trump Administration directed the Navy to assist tankers in departing the Persian Gulf, and about 200 have reportedly made the transit as of this writing. In either case, it certainly appears these transits have depended on Iranian restraint during the recent ceasefire. Any future resumptions in hostilities will prompt Tehran to close the Strait again, as happened on June 11.

Anticipating this, U.S. Central Command previously announced its intention to restore freedom of navigation through the Strait. In view of Iran’s previous attacks on vessels attempting this transit, shippers and their underwriters are unlikely to accept anything less than armed naval escorts. But this level of support is unlikely for the simple reason that the risk of losing one or more $2.5 billion guided missile destroyers to attack at close range, while restricted in their ability to maneuver, is too high. Enemy strikes would logically concentrate on the naval escorts, since without these, shippers will decline attempting the passage. Even close air support will be affected, as weapon payloads would likely have to be reduced to accommodate the additional weight in fuel required to fly from carriers stationed far out to sea – safely beyond the range of Iranian drone swarms and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs). And ultimately there are likely far too few military escorts given the volume of commercial shipping, and escort operations cannot be maintained indefinitely.

The problem is that Iran has met America’s great power forces and methods with asymmetric tactics the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were unprepared to counter. The remedy is to fight fire with fire, balancing conventional warships and aviation squadrons with inexpensive and expendable unmanned systems better adapted to the threat environment.

Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen effectively contested the Bab al-Mandab strait in 2024 and heavily influenced the flow of shipping despite repeated attacks from carrier strike groups. The Houthis subsequently denied this chokepoint to two American carrier strike groups in the Iran War, with one remaining in the northern Red Sea, and the other being forced to transit around the entire continent of Africa. This is the definition of asymmetric warfare.

To effectively impact Iran’s ability to launch similar attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. would have to seize and hold the coastline from where these strikes originate. If the landings are successful, occupation of these coastal regions would force Iran to move its drone and ASCM launch sites further inland, increasing the reaction time for forces to target and engage, while exposing Iranian weapons to ground fire enroute to their targets at sea.

However, this carries significant risks of its own. The initial landings would be confined to beaches along the Gulf of Oman, since a forced transit into the Persian Gulf is too dangerous and would forfeit the element of surprise. It would also require the landing force to maneuver north to control the coast at least as far as Bandar Abbas. And the threat posed by ASCMs, drones, and fast attack boat swarms will limit naval gunfire support against counterattack by Iran’s massive army and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. These landing sites would also create major standing logistical demands to ensure their sustainment and reinforcement, especially as Iranian ground forces seek to eject landing forces back into the sea. This option demonstrates the extreme challenges the U.S. would have to accept in order to truly contest Iranian littoral anti-access area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities with existing force structure.

It is time to take a serious look at how the Navy allocates its resources in responding to the threats of both peer adversaries like China, and regional powers like Iran that control important chokepoints. Drones, whether surface, subsurface, or airborne are not “impressive” in the same way conventional warships are. But the reality is that inexpensive, mass-produced systems have closed off the Persian Gulf and checked U.S. naval forces in their attempts at reopening it. The U.S. industrial base can no longer build warships or munitions at the pace needed to quickly replace the losses that might be incurred in landing forces on the Iranian coast, forcibly transiting the Strait, and continuing the fires campaign.

None of this is meant to say the Navy should immediately focus all its resources on procurement of inexpensive, uncrewed drones. Rather, these should be introduced as a crucial complement to traditional warships with their sophisticated weapon systems, for use in asymmetric threat environments. Instead of dedicating too much new construction funding to building new battleships, the Navy should pursue an aggressive program to acquire inexpensive, expendable, but highly capable offensive platforms to challenge enemy A2/AD operations and support power projection by the traditional fleet.

In view of this and other threats, the U.S. must treat emerging re-armament paradigms with a sense of urgency. The industrial base can still mass produce simple, inexpensive yet lethal weapons at scale, and far more quickly than the years it takes to design, build, crew, and train the complement of a warship. Likewise, drone maintenance, operation and operator training requires a tiny fraction of the resources consumed in keeping warships and aviation squadrons battle ready.

The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the greater the chances of a world energy crisis and famine become. Allies and once-friendly nations are turning away from American leadership and building independent strategic and economic coalitions in matters of mutual defense and free-trade agreements. Alfred Thayer Mahan once argued that British control of the seas, and a corresponding decline in the naval strength of its European adversaries paved the way for Great Britain’s emergence as the world’s dominant military, political, and economic power. Unless the U.S. learns from today’s strategic failures and economic limitations, the inefficient development and employment of the U.S. Navy may pave the way for the emergence of a new naval power as its own declines.

Paul Viscovich is a retired Surface Warfare Officer with 20 years’ service, twelve of that on sea duty. He is a frequent contributor to CIMSEC and publishes a current events newsletter, From Center Field, on paulviscovich.substack.com.

Featured Image: An F/A-18E Super Hornet, attached to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 14, makes an arrested landing on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in support of Operation Epic Fury, March. 4, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo)

Iran War Topic Week

By Rear Adm. Roberto Domini, Italian Navy, (Ret.)

Introduction

The Strait of Hormuz is arguably the most consequential chokepoint in the global economy. Barely thirty kilometers wide at its narrowest point, it connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and to the Indian Ocean, channeling about one-fifth of the world’s oil and one-quarter of its liquefied natural gas through two shipping lanes, each no wider than three kilometers.¹ For decades, this slender corridor has served as the vital artery of international energy trade, and treated as a given of the global order.

That assumption ended on February 28, 2026, when the joint US–Israeli operation Epic Fury was launched against Iranian territory. What had been conceived as a surgical strike to decapitate the regime and neutralize Iran’s nuclear program rapidly deteriorated into a high-intensity conflict without clearly defined political objectives or a credible exit strategy. As one analyst observed, the operation represents “a paradigmatic case of strategic overextension” in which initial tactical enthusiasm has collided with the ruthless logic of long-term strategy, producing repercussions for the Gulf’s security architecture and for the balance of power among great powers.”²

For Italy, the crisis is anything but a distant emergency. A nation historically bound to the sea and dependent on imports for more than 75 percent of its energy needs, Italy faces in Hormuz a direct challenge to its energy security, economic resilience, and strategic credibility. These stakes are best understood through the lens of the wider Mediterranean — defined as the Italian M.O.T. (Maritime Operational Theatre) of primary national interest, encompassing all countries towards which Italy pursues a unified and independent security strategy, as well as areas of concern to NATO and the European Union.³ This concept has evolved over time from a strictly geographic definition into a broader geostrategic vision that accounts for Italy’s interactions with Europe, Asia, and Africa. At its core lies the notion of strategic depth – the capacity to project influence beyond maritime borders as a precondition for national security and prosperity.⁴

The closure of Hormuz must be read through this framework — not as a regional crisis to be observed from a safe distance, but as a challenge that “cannot be delegated to others.”⁵ This analysis traces the evolution of the conflict, assesses its geopolitical and operational consequences, and highlights Italy’s maritime vulnerabilities, which if left unaddressed, could lead to the loss of its relevance in the Mediterranean.

Asymmetric Warfare in the Strait of Hormuz

The conflict unleashed a systemic crisis whose epicenter was the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and nearly a third of its liquefied natural gas flow daily.⁶ Tehran’s response was not conventional. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy quickly activated a well-rehearsed interdiction system: fast attack craft of the so-called Mosquito Fleet, swarms of aerial and surface drones, and a mine arsenal estimated at between 2,000 and 6,000 warheads, including Chinese-origin rocket-propelled devices with acoustic and magnetic triggers. Systematic GPS jamming erased AIS tracking signals across the Strait, creating a blind theatre in which nearly one million interferences were recorded in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Even before the first clashes erupted, insurance markets and logistical calculations were already heavily affected.⁷

The escalation unfolded rapidly. A U.S. destroyer intercepted an Iranian cargo vessel, opening fire after hours of unanswered warnings, with Marines eventually boarding and seizing it.⁸ Tehran labelled the action armed piracy, negotiations in Islamabad collapsed, and Brent crude surged to nearly $97 a barrel. The IMO estimated that 800 ships were soon trapped in the Gulf, with over 20,000 seafarers stranded aboard. Pasdaran gunboats fired on transiting merchant vessels, and two container ships — operated by an Italian–Swiss group with a turnover close to €90 billion — were seized outright. ⁹

Washington then attempted to force the passage with Operation Project Freedom, deploying destroyers, aircraft, and thousands of personnel to escort commercial shipping through the Strait. Only two US-flagged vessels completed the transit before Iran retaliated with missiles against a South Korean ship and drone strikes on the Emirati port of Fujairah.¹⁰ Within two days the operation was suspended, its failure acknowledged. Iran’s parliament president declared that Tehran had not even begun to fight; the foreign minister dismissed the entire American effort as Project Deadlock. Negotiations mediated by Pakistan, Oman, and Russia remained deadlocked, though Iran had earlier put forward a 14-point roadmap offering a gradual reopening of the Strait in exchange for a fifteen-year freeze on uranium enrichment — a proposal Washington received with caution.¹¹

By early May the toll was stark: 32 verified incidents, at least ten sailors dead, over 500 million barrels withheld from global markets, and an estimated cost of $72 billion in the first sixty days. IEA strategic reserves covered barely 21 percent of the physical deficit and risked technical depletion by June. Europe alone absorbed losses exceeding €27 billion — roughly €500 million per day — as gas prices doubled and Brent reached $112 a barrel. The Suez Canal registered a 48 percent collapse in traffic, and war risk insurance premiums tripled, adding $250,000 to every supertanker voyage.¹²

After 38 days of operations, the CENTCOM commander testified before the US Senate that Epic Fury had destroyed or severely degraded more than 85 percent of Iran’s military-industrial base for missiles, drones, and naval defense, eliminating 161 naval units. Yet Iran retained what he termed a disruption capability — fast boats, drones, mines and proxy networks — sufficient to keep risk levels in the Strait dangerously elevated. A forty-nation coalition led by the United Kingdom maintained patrols under Operation Sentinel, while the Trump–Xi summit in Beijing produced agreement on keeping Hormuz open but no structural breakthrough, with China preserving its characteristic pragmatic neutrality.¹³

Looking ahead, analysts caution that Iran’s leverage may prove less decisive than it appears. A prolonged blockade ultimately damages Tehran as well as its adversaries, creating space for negotiation. Even so, any physical normalization of energy markets would require six to twelve months after an agreement. The broader risk is systemic — the Iranian precedent may embolden other coastal states to impose control over strategic waterways, steadily eroding the freedom of navigation on which the global economy depends.¹⁴

Geopolitical and Strategic Consequences

Hormuz is not a regional crisis theatre, but the laboratory where the grammar of maritime power is being rewritten. The Iranian doctrine of sea denial, perfected over 40 years of A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) planning, has demonstrated an uncomfortable truth: in such a narrow corridor, a mid-tier actor can deny freedom of maneuver to the world’s most powerful navy, not by achieving physical control of the waters, but by making transit economically unsustainable. The keystone is the asymmetric cost ratio. Each Shahed drone, valued at between $20,000 and $50,000, can invite the use of a PAC-3 missile interceptor costing approximately four million dollars: an exchange ratio of 130 to 1 that has bled American stockpiles dry. In forty days, the Pentagon has expended 1,100 JASSM missiles, 1,000 Tomahawks, 1,200 Patriots and 1,000 ATACMS, incurring an expenditure of between $28 and $35 billion. Replenishing these arsenals will take at least six years at current production rates.¹⁵ Beyond the cost ratios, the mere threat of sea denial capability is enough to heavily shape the behavior of shipping companies and influence their risk calculus.

On a geopolitical level, the conflict has accelerated the transition from a unipolar order to a conflictual and fragmented multipolarity. Washington has discovered the limits of its own power projection. The naval blockade against Iranian ports has strangled global energy trade without breaking Tehran, while Russia has exploited the American distraction to grow its influence in Europe, blocking the transit of Kazakh oil to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline since May 1 and positioning itself as an indispensable mediator.¹⁶ China, which purchases 80–90 percent of Iranian oil exports, has practiced a calculated ambiguity. Without openly violating the blockade, China has contested its legitimacy and pressed for the reopening of the Strait.¹⁷ The Gulf monarchies, led by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have denied the use of their bases for “Project Freedom,” fearing retaliation against their energy infrastructure. On April 28, the United Arab Emirates announced its withdrawal from OPEC after 58 years. The post-war alliance architecture is showing structural cracks that no tactical move will be able to heal in the short term.¹⁸

Europe, for its part, has launched strategic initiatives but has clashed with its own operational fragmentation. The Franco-British proposal for a multinational mission with alternating command, discussed at Northwood on April 27 with over thirty countries, has remained devoid of concrete commitments. RUSI has calculated that a close blockade of Iranian ports would require approximately one hundred naval vessels to maintain twenty-two on station, a critical mass that European navies, taken individually, do not possess.^{19, 20}

Furthermore, the crisis has unveiled a hybrid dimension that transcends the strictly maritime domain. Italy has already experienced an event of this kind in one of its ports. The explosion of the oil tanker Seajewel in the port of Vado Ligure during the night between February 14-15 2025, attributed to TNT devices equipped with magnets and timers of probable Ukrainian origin (an act of hybrid warfare linked to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict), has demonstrated that European energy terminals are already the target of clandestine operations tied to hybrid warfare and the interdiction of the pro-Russian shadow fleet. The event highlights the vulnerability of Italian energy terminals, which now simultaneously face local physical threats and the blockade of global routes due to U.S.-Iran tensions.²¹

Italy’s Mediterranean strategy: Imperatives for a Maritime Nation

The Hormuz crisis has forced Italy to confront a structural truth long obscured by institutional inertia: a nation surrounded by the sea on three sides, importing more than 75 percent of its energy, and whose prosperity depends on the free flow of global trade, cannot afford a passive maritime posture. The closure of the Strait has been, in this sense, the most severe stress test of Italy’s energy and maritime model since 1973.

The immediate consequences were stark. The blockade severed supplies of Qatari LNG — accounting for 10 to 12% of national imports, approximately 6.4 billion cubic meters annually — after QatarEnergy declared force majeure.²² The IMF revised Italy’s growth forecast down to 0.4%, the worst figure in Europe, while energy surcharges have already cost households roughly 1,000 Euros each. Alternative routes have struggled to absorb the shock: urgent transit auctions at the Panama Canal surged by 185%, and only the TAP corridor from Azerbaijan — covering 16% of national gas supply — provided a degree of structural resilience. New pipelines towards the Red Sea and the IMEC corridor are being planned to bypass the bottleneck permanently, but their realization lies years away.²³

Yet the crisis has also revealed an unexpected competitive advantage. Italy’s Marina Militare possesses some of the most advanced Mine Countermeasures capabilities within NATO. Its fleet of eight Gaeta-class minehunters — built from non-magnetic fiberglass and equipped with multi-frequency VDS sonars, ROVs and autonomous marine drone integration — clears approximately 14,000 explosive devices annually.²⁴ This expertise is grounded in an operational pedigree stretching back to the Gulf 1 mission of 1987–1988, the first international minesweeping campaign ever conducted in the Strait of Hormuz. No European ally combines equivalent technical proficiency with Italy’s historical neutrality in the Gulf and its open diplomatic channels with Tehran, Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi and Tokyo. Washington has explicitly recognized this, urging Rome to join clearance operations as a perhaps irreplaceable contributor. The operational plan foresees the deployment of four vessels — minehunters Crotone and Rimini, a Bergamini-class frigate and a logistics support ship — deployable within four weeks from La Spezia. The €1.6 billion CNG program will guarantee twelve next-generation platforms and sustain this primacy beyond 2035.²⁵

The legal dimension reinforces Italy’s claim to lead or co-lead the mission. As legal scholar Fabio Caffio has clarified, a bilateral US–Iran agreement is insufficient for a strait classified as common waters under UNCLOS. Any minesweeping operation requires either Omani authorization or a UN Security Council mandate.²⁶ A mission commanded by Italy — a nation that has conducted no offensive operations against Iran — is structurally more acceptable to Tehran than any US-led alternative.²⁷

The deeper lesson, however, is doctrinal. Post-Hormuz, strategic influence no longer derives from controlling vast oceanic expanses but from governing the nodes through which global flows converge: chokepoints, LNG terminals, and the subsea data cables carrying 95% of world internet traffic. Italy must therefore update its national maritime doctrine, closing critical gaps in drone countermeasures, undersea warfare, and the cyber-physical protection of offshore infrastructure. The concept of the Wider Mediterranean — Italy’s primary maritime operational theatre, spanning the interactions between Europe, Africa and Asia — demands precisely this kind of strategic depth.²⁸

Investing in MCM platforms, counter-drone architectures, and persistent subsea surveillance is not a budget choice. It is the precondition for Italy’s autonomy, resilience, and credibility as a Mediterranean power in the twenty-first century. Hormuz has made that imperative impossible to defer.

Conclusion

The Strait of Hormuz crisis, triggered by Operation Epic Fury in February 2026, is not a mere cyclical episode destined to fade away. It is an indicator of structural transformations in the global maritime order that are redefining the strategic priorities of Italy and Europe as a whole.

On an operational level, the Iranian doctrine of sea denial has demonstrated an uncomfortable truth: a mid-tier actor, armed with low-cost drones, mines, and electronic warfare, can render transit through the planet’s most strategic strait economically unsustainable. Freedom of navigation is no longer a given, but a hard-won achievement requiring specialized capabilities, diplomatic credibility, and a constant presence.

On a geopolitical level, the crisis has accelerated the transition towards a conflict-prone and fragmented multipolarity. Washington has discovered the limits of its power projection, Europe has displayed strategic ambitions devoid of critical mass, whilst Russia and China have successfully exploited the vacuum to their advantage.

Italy finds itself at a crossroads. It can passively endure the effects of the crisis—with costs already estimated in the billions of euros and a downward revision of economic growth—or assert an active role, founded upon concrete capabilities and a diplomatic credibility that no other Western actor can boast in equal measure.

The answer can only be the latter. Italy possesses the most advanced MCM capabilities within NATO, a history of neutrality in the Gulf dating back to the 1987–1988 mission, and open diplomatic channels with all key actors: Tehran, Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi. This unique combination of technical excellence, legal legitimacy, and political credibility places Rome in a position not merely to participate, but to lead or co-lead the clearance mission in the Strait.

The most profound lesson of this crisis, however, is systemic in nature: energy security, digital sovereignty, and economic prosperity now converge within a single domain—the sea—and the Navy (Marina Militare) is its indispensable custodian. Investing in a modern naval force, equipped with specialized personnel and advanced platforms, is not merely a defense budget choice, it is a strategic imperative for the survival and prosperity of the nation in the 21st century. Hormuz has made this an issue that can no longer be deferred.

Rear Adm. Roberto Domini (Ret.) served 41 years as an Italian Navy Staff Officer, commanding ships and naval bases. A Royal Naval College graduate, he chaired Maritime Strategy and Naval History at the Naval Staff College in Livorno and Venezia. He worked as defense diplomat in Egypt and Croatia. Currently, he directs the CESMAR research center, lectures globally on geopolitics, and publishes widely on maritime strategy and geopolitics.

Citations

[1] Oliva P.B., “Perché si parla dello Stretto di Hormuz,” DiRE, National News Agency, 15 June 2025, https://www.dire.it/15-06-2025/1159292-perche-tutti-parlano-dello-stretto-di-hormuz-cosa-succede-davvero-e-cosa-rischia-il-mondo/.

[2] Evangelisti A., “Operation Epic Fury e l’overstretch americano: quando la guerra lampo diventa palude strategica,” Geopolitica.info, 13 March 2026, https://geopolitica.info/operation-epic-fury-e-loverstretch-americano-quando-la-guerra-lampo-diventa-palude-strategica/.

[3] Various Authors, CESMAR 004, L’Italia e la marittimità: evoluzione strategico-dottrinaria, Pathos Ed, Turin, 2023, p. 316.

[4] CESMAR Editorial Staff, “Il Mediterraneo allargato: una visione strategica per l’Italia,” Cesmar.it, Bussola no. 43, February 2025, https://cesmar.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/BUSSOLA-NR-43-MEDITERRANEO-ALLARGATO.pdf.

[5] Domini R., “L’ammiraglio Roberto Domini: per l’Italia intervenire a Hormuz è questione di interesse nazionale,” InsideOver, 28 April 2026, https://it.insideover.com/guerra/lammiraglio-roberto-domini-per-litalia-intervenire-a-hormuz-e-questione-di-interesse-nazionale.html.

[6] OHIMag Editorial Staff, “OHiMag daily global maritime geopolitical forecast,” 5 May 2026, https://www.ohimag.com/sintesi-giornaliera-di-geopolitica-e-relazioni-internazionali/sintesi-giornaliera-del-5-maggio-2026.

[7] Molteni M., “Hormuz: tempesta sullo stretto,” AnalisiDifesa, 14 March 2026, https://www.analisidifesa.it/2026/03/hormuz-tempesta-sullo-stretto/.

[8] Fabey M., “Iran conflict 2026: US destroyer disables Iranian cargo ship to enforce blockade,” Janes, 20 April 2026, https://www.janes.com/defence-intelligence-insights/defence-news/weapons/iran-conflict-2026-us-destroyer-disables-iranian-cargo-ship-to-enforce-blockade.

[9] Boccellato P., “Stretto di Hormuz, l’Iran sequestra due navi MSC. C’entra lo spoofing?,” CyberSecurity Italia, 26 April 2026, https://www.cybersecitalia.it/stretto-di-hormuz-liran-sequestra-due-navi-msc-centra-lo-spoofing/63478/.

[10] OHIMag Editorial Staff, “OHiMag daily global maritime geopolitical forecast,” ohimag.com, 7 May 2026, https://www.ohimag.com/sintesi-giornaliera-di-geopolitica-e-relazioni-internazionali/sintesi-giornaliera-del-7-maggio-2026.

[11] Ibidem.

[12] OHIMag Editorial Staff, “OHiMag daily global maritime geopolitical forecast,” ohimag.com, 12 May 2026, https://www.ohimag.com/sintesi-giornaliera-di-geopolitica-e-relazioni-internazionali/sintesi-giornaliera-del-12-maggio-2026.

[13] HIMag Editorial Staff, “OHiMag daily global maritime geopolitical forecast,” ohimag.com, 15 May 2026, https://www.ohimag.com/sintesi-giornaliera-di-geopolitica-e-relazioni-internazionali/sintesi-giornaliera-del-15-maggio-2026.

[14] OHIMag Editorial Staff, “OHiMag daily global maritime geopolitical forecast,” ohimag.com, 18 May 2026, https://www.ohimag.com/sintesi-giornaliera-di-geopolitica-e-relazioni-internazionali/sintesi-giornaliera-del-18-maggio-2026.

[15] Scott O., “US has ‘burned through’ billions of dollars’ worth of critical weapons supplies in the Iran war, report claims,” Independent, 24 April 2026, https://ca.news.yahoo.com/us-burned-billions-dollars-worth-084420530.html.

[16] Bryanski G., “Exclusive-Russia to halt Kazakhstan’s oil flows to Germany via Druzhba, sources say,” Internazionale, 21 April 2026, https://www.internazionale.it/ultime-notizie-reuters/2026/04/21/exclusive-russia-to-halt-kazakhstan-s-oil-flows-to-germany-via-druzhba-sources-say-2.

[17] Rampini F., “La Cina e il grande trucco delle «raffinerie indipendenti» con cui sfida gli Usa: «Sul petrolio iraniano sanzioni senza valore»,” Corriere della Sera, 4 May 2026, https://www.corriere.it/oriente-occidente-federico-rampini/26_maggio_04/gioco-cina-petrolio-iraniano-113275f8-fe6d-4c5f-8302-a8dd59bddxlk.shtml.

[18] Schneider F., “The UAE’s OPEC Exit Leaves the Gulf Further Adrift,” Middle East Council on Global Affairs, 5 May 2026, https://mecouncil.org/blog_posts/the-uaes-opec-exit-leaves-the-gulf-further-adrift/.

[19] idharth Kaushal and Dan Marks, “The US Blockade of Hormuz: Who Holds the Advantage?,” RUSI, 5 May 2026, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/us-blockade-hormuz-who-holds-advantage.

[20] Kyriakidis E., “Naval blockade vs. maritime interdiction operation,” Strategy International, 8 May 2026, https://strategyinternational.org/2026/05/08/publication265/.

[21] Del Frate C., “Seajewel, per l’esplosione sulla petroliera aperta a Genova inchiesta per terrorismo. Cosa sappiamo,” Corriere della Sera, 19 February 2025, https://www.corriere.it/cronache/25_febbraio_19/seajewel-per-l-esplosione-sulla-petroliera-aperta-a-genova-inchiesta-per-terrorismo-3ceee634-327d-43fc-9539-5fa800899xlk.shtml.

[22]Various Authors, “QatarEnergy extends force majeure until mid-June 2026,” Edison, 27 March 2026, https://www.edison.it/en/qatarenergy-extends-force-majeure-until-mid-june-2026.

[23] Various Authors, “Scenari geopolitici Ohimag,” cesmar.it, 20 April 2026, https://cesmar.it/scenari-geopolitici-26/.

[24] Vianello M., “L’ammiraglio Vianello: così i cacciamine italiani possono liberare lo Stretto di Hormuz,” InsideOver, 2 May 2026, https://it.insideover.com/guerra/lammiraglio-vianello-cosi-i-cacciamine-italiani-possono-liberare-lo-stretto-di-hormuz.html.

[25] Domini R., Op. cit.

[26] Caffio F., “Quale accordo per riaprire Hormuz. L’analisi di Caffio,” formiche.net, 7 May 2026.

[27] Domini R., “Sminamento dello Stretto di Hormuz: perché l’Italia ha diritto al comando della missione,” InsideOver, 5 May 2026, https://it.insideover.com/guerra/sminamento-dello-stretto-di-hormuz-perche-litalia-ha-diritto-al-comando-della-missione.html.

[28] CESMAR Editorial Staff, Il Mediterraneo allargato: una visione strategica per l’Italia, Bussola no. 43, February 2025, https://cesmar.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/BUSSOLA-NR-43-MEDITERRANEO-ALLARGATO.pdf.

Featured Image: SOUTH CHINA SEA (June 28, 2024) – The Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Mobile (LCS 26), transits the South China Sea with the Italian Carrier Strike Group consisting of the aircraft carrier ITS Cavour (CVH 550), flagship of the Italian Navy’s Fleet, center, and the Carlo Bergamini-class FREMM Frigate ITS Alpino (F 594), front, while conducting bilateral operations in the South China Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. j.g. Akari Yarrell)

Iran War Topic Week

By Ehud Eiran

The joint military campaign launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026, was initially conceived and executed primarily as an air campaign. The opening phase of the war centered on aerial strikes against Iran’s political and military leadership and other command-and-control networks, missile infrastructure, air defenses, and military-industrial targets. In contrast, the maritime domain played only a secondary role in the initial stages of the conflict. The maritime aspects initially included the fact that many of the American attacks were conducted from planes and missiles launched from warships, as well as attacks on naval assets such as the sinking of an Iranian frigate in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka.

This situation changed dramatically once Iran moved to exploit its most significant geostrategic asset – the Strait of Hormuz. By disrupting maritime traffic through the strait, Tehran transformed the conflict from a regional military confrontation into a challenge to the global economy. As energy markets reacted and commercial shipping began to reroute, the maritime domain rapidly became a central theater of the war. The United States subsequently shifted substantial military resources toward restoring freedom of navigation and reopening the waterway to international commerce. The maritime dimension expanded further on April 13, 2026, when Washington transitioned from trying to reopen the strait to actively interdicting and restricting Iranian-related maritime traffic. What had begun as a campaign against Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities increasingly evolved into a contest over maritime access, sea control, and economic warfare.

This transition exposed a structural asymmetry within the U.S.-Israeli war effort. Although the campaign was politically and strategically joint, and the U.S. had described Israel as a “model ally,” the maritime theater was overwhelmingly an American responsibility. Israel possesses capable naval forces and extensive experience in maritime security operations in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea. However, it lacks the expeditionary naval capabilities necessary to sustain large-scale operations in the Persian Gulf and the wider Indian Ocean. Only the United States possessed the carrier strike groups, amphibious forces, logistics networks, intelligence architecture, and maritime command structures necessary to contest Iranian actions in the Persian Gulf and guarantee the flow of international commerce. As the war’s center of gravity shifted from air to sea, the operational burden increasingly fell on Washington.

This operational asymmetry reflected a deeper divergence in strategic perspectives. The United States and Israel shared an immediate concern regarding Iran’s nuclear program and regional military posture. Yet the United States, as a global power, approached the conflict through a much broader strategic lens. Beyond degrading Iranian military capabilities, Washington had to consider the stability of global energy markets, the security of international shipping lanes, the interests of allies in Europe and Asia, and the credibility of the United States as the principal guarantor of freedom of navigation. A prolonged closure of Hormuz threatened not only military objectives but also the functioning of the global economy and the wider international order that successive American administrations had sought to preserve.

Israel’s perspective was different. Israeli strategic culture has historically been shaped by the country’s geography, threat environment, and military experience. Since Israel gained independence in 1948, its security establishment has focused overwhelmingly on land and air power. The country’s major wars were fought on land, and its most celebrated military achievements were achieved through armored maneuver, intelligence superiority, and air power. Although maritime issues had become more important in recent years because of a new dependence on offshore energy and desalinated water, as well as the threat of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, maritime strategy remains a relatively recent addition to Israeli strategic thinking. Consequently, Israeli policymakers tended to view the maritime domain primarily through the prism of its contribution to the campaign against Iran rather than as an arena whose stability carried intrinsic strategic value.

The American perspective was almost the reverse. Since the earliest years of the Republic, the protection of maritime commerce has occupied a central place in U.S. grand strategy. From the Barbary Wars through the two World Wars, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War era, American policymakers have consistently regarded open sea lanes as a vital national interest. The U.S. Navy was built not merely to defeat adversaries at sea but to secure a maritime order that facilitates global trade and economic stability. Although President Trump was less clear on the issue compared to many of his predecessors, American decision-makers were inclined to evaluate military actions in Hormuz not only according to their impact on Iran, but also according to their consequences for shipping, insurance markets, energy prices, and the broader international system.

As the war increasingly revolved around the maritime domain, these differing strategic traditions generated subtle but important tensions. For Israel, continued military pressure on Iran appeared consistent with the broader objective of degrading Iranian power. For the United States, however, the restoration of maritime order gradually became an objective in its own right. This did not produce an open alliance dispute, but it did create different hierarchies of priorities. Israel viewed the sea primarily as another theater through which Iran could be weakened. The United States viewed the sea as both a theater of war and a strategic system whose disruption could undermine wider political and economic interests. In this sense, the struggle over Hormuz revealed that even in a highly coordinated coalition campaign, allies may share enemies while possessing different conceptions of what constitutes strategic success. These differences are perhaps inevitable when the de-facto alliance is between a land-oriented regional power, and a maritime-oriented global power.

Israel tried to close this gap by contributing directly to the maritime aspects of the war by using its air power against Iranian naval assets. On March 18, 2026 a day before the U.S. launched its operation to open the Strait, the Israeli air force attacked an Iranian naval base in the Caspian sea. This was seen as directed at interrupting a supply route from Russia, but was also a reminder that Israel can contribute to the maritime aspects of the war. On March 26, 2026, the Israeli air force killed the head of the IRGC’s navy, and Israel made a point in stressing that he led the blockade over the Hormuz strait. By April 2026, the Israeli Navy was proud to report that its intelligence efforts were used, presumably by the air force, to attack 95 targets in Iran.

The divergence between American and Israeli strategic priorities in the maritime domain points to a broader challenge that will likely define coalition warfare in the coming decades – the mismatch between politically unified alliances and operationally asymmetric partners. The U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran offers a rare real-world test case for what happens when a land-oriented regional power and a maritime-oriented global power fight side by side. The structural tensions that emerged are instructive precisely because they arose not from disagreement over ends, but from deeply ingrained differences in strategic culture, capability, and institutional memory.

Israel’s attempts to compensate for its maritime limitations through air power, such striking Iranian naval bases in the Caspian, eliminating the IRGC Navy commander, and providing targeting intelligence for dozens of strikes, reveal an important adaptation: a land-air power seeking maritime relevance through the tools it knows best. This is not merely a tactical improvisation but a doctrinal signal. As maritime competition grows in strategic importance globally, regional powers that lack blue-water navies may increasingly pursue sea control objectives through land-based and air-delivered means. Israel’s performance in this conflict may well accelerate that trend, offering a template for other states navigating similar capability gaps.

Yet this approach has inherent ceilings. Air power can attrite naval assets and kill commanders, but it cannot patrol chokepoints, escort convoys, or sustain the persistent presence required to restore the confidence of commercial shippers and insurance underwriters. Sea control, in the end, requires forces that live at sea. The Hormuz crisis made this distinction painfully clear: degrading Iran’s navy from the air reduced Iranian capacity to threaten. But it was the physical presence of American surface combatants and carrier aviation that ultimately played a crucial role in determining whether tankers moved, including as guarantors to the maritime aspects of the U.S.-Iran agreement.

The lesson for regional powers is that they might need to rethink traditional strengths (land/air) and develop maritime capacity. Another lesson is how chokepoints like Hormuz magnify global-local dynamics: a regional conflict can force even a land-focused state to pivot toward sea lanes and naval strategy. In Israel’s case, this would be less about building a blue-water navy capable of global dominance and more about expanding regional maritime capabilities. This could mean greater investment in securing sea lines closer to home, like in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Israel already has energy assets and strategic interests. It might also mean enhanced cooperation with navies like the U.S., more focus on protecting ports, undersea infrastructure, or even regional maritime diplomacy, ensuring that, even if not a global maritime power, it is still a player in regional maritime security.

Israel does not depend on Hormuz for its own oil supply. But the closure revealed how global maritime chokepoints can escalate a conflict far beyond the immediate actors. For Israel, the lesson is not about reopening Hormuz. It is about realizing that future conflicts could affect maritime routes closer to home, like the Suez Canal or Eastern Mediterranean energy corridors. This could push Israel to integrate maritime resilience into its strategy and work on ensuring it is not just a junior partner if a future maritime crisis unfolds in its own region.

Ehud Eiran, PhD, is the Chair, Department of international Relations, University of Haifa, Israel and a research fellow at the Haifa-based, Institute for Maritime Policy and Strategy (MPS).

Featured Image: Eight Israeli Air Force F-15I Ra’am strike fighter jets of 69 Squadron “Hammers” Israel on their way to attack Iran in June 2025. (IDF photo)