Iran War Topic Week

By Admiral Massimo Vianello (Ret.) and Master Chief Petty Officer Giovanni Giorguli (Ret.)

The conflict between Iran and the Israel-United States alliance confirms that conventional armed forces must currently confront asymmetric threats that subvert the logic of traditional power projection. In the maritime domain, naval mines, sabotage, and unmanned systems (UAVs, USVs, and UUVs) offer a highly favorable cost-benefit ratio for the weaker actor: low-cost attritable swarms can saturate adversary defenses, effectively neutralizing the overall technological gap.

These threats, once categorized as one-off tactics employed in isolation, are now weighted by indigenous industrial capacities and employed at scale by Iran and its proxy networks. They are systematically integrated with cyber operations and strategic disinformation campaigns designed to destabilize financial markets, energy security, and global communication architectures.

In the Middle Eastern theater, Iran exercises strategic control over the Strait of Hormuz through the employment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), sea mines, coastal defense cruise missiles (CDCMs), and Fast Inshore Attack Craft (FIAC), deliberately avoiding a conventional naval engagement that would result in its defeat. The global economic fallout – reduced energy availability, supply chain disruption, and the escalation of insurance premiums and fuel costs – generates political instability and constrains international relations. When such a posture is sustained by great powers, it can be maintained over the long term, as demonstrated in the Ukrainian theater where Western-funded mines, drones, and missiles have effectively contained the Russian navy’s operational freedom.

The shifting paradigm of maritime engagement in the Middle Eastern theater, specifically within the Strait of Hormuz, underscores a transition from traditional naval confrontation to a sophisticated asymmetric and multi-domain posture. This analysis examines the Iranian threat profile, characterized by the integration of Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategies, and highlights the critical role of naval mining and the proliferation of unmanned systems. Furthermore, this article explores the emergence of seabed warfare as a critical operational domain, highlighting the vulnerability of Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI) and the necessity for persistent Seabed-to-Space Situational Awareness (S3A). By evaluating the integration of Emerging Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) and artificial intelligence driven autonomous systems, this paper argues for a balanced, gradual evolution toward autonomous systems, while addressing the operational, legal, and ethical challenges posed by the robotization of the maritime battlespace.

The Profile of the Iranian Threat

Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran adopted a posture of radical ideological and strategic hostility toward Israel, severing all diplomatic ties. Refusing to recognize the Jewish state, Tehran has employed rhetoric calling for its destruction and has long conducted a proxy war against Israel through a network of militarily and financially supported affiliates (Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis). Tehran pursues a nuclear program, which Israel perceives as an existential threat. Furthermore, Iran views the United States as a threat to its sovereign survival. Consequently, Iran has consistently prioritized the development of A2/AD capabilities. This strategy encompasses not only the nuclear sector but also strategic missile deterrence and non-conventional capabilities, including the subsurface domain.

Specifically, drawing from the operational lessons of the Tanker War and Operation Desert Storm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) assigns a pivotal role to naval mines for the strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Sophisticated mining techniques result from exercises focused on pre-planned measures to blockade or interdict maritime traffic using indigenous and Russian-derived moored and bottom mines, as well as Chinese-manufactured self-propelled mines. While Iran’s primary maritime area of interest is the Strait of Hormuz, its regional interests are projected elsewhere via support for terrorist factions, such as the Houthi operations in the Red Sea.¹

Iran has developed a subsurface component based on small, heavily armed platforms capable of executing asymmetric and saturation tactics, which can be suitable for seabed warfare operations.

The underwater order of battle (ORBAT) includes three 1990s-era Kilo I class submarines, one Fateh class coastal submarine, and between 14 and 17 midget submarines (one Nahang class and approximately 16 North Korean/indigenous Ghadir class). These are augmented by locally produced Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs) of the Al-Sabehat and Ghavasi types for Special Operations Forces (SOF) tasks.^2,3 Recently, the inventory has expanded to include the Nazir-1 Extra Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV) and weaponized UUVs (small-scale, long-range slow torpedoes).^4,5

While the opacity of the maritime environment provides opportunities for covert subsurface operations – ranging from SOF insertion to mine-laying via surface units and midget craft – the overall underwater component also appears to maintain credible anti-ship capabilities (ASuW).

Countering Asymmetric Threats

The IRGCN and the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN, or NEDAJA) function as two distinct naval entities, operating across different geographical Areas of Interest (AOIs) and employing divergent tactical doctrines. The former, an integral branch of the Revolutionary Guard, holds primary responsibility for asymmetric defense within the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The latter is focused on the protection of long-range maritime interests, blue-water patrolling, and counter-piracy operations.

Given that the IRIN’s surface combatant capability was effectively neutralized following engagements with U.S. forces, Iran’s national defense now rests fundamentally upon coastal missile batteries and the IRGCN. Consequently, it is characterized by a pronounced asymmetric posture that currently maintains a degree of containment against American military superiority.

Naval Mines

Although it is estimated that only a limited number of devices have been deployed in Hormuz to date, Iran possesses a substantial inventory of underwater ordnance (ranging between 2,000 and 6,000 units), consisting of indigenous designs and Russian or Chinese-derived systems. Therefore, the mine threat in the Strait of Hormuz must be assessed as substantial. Furthermore, it cannot be ruled out that Iran might resort to protective mining of its territorial waters, utilizing influence mines such as the MAHAM 7 (a mine that strikingly similar to the Italian Manta) and MAHAM 5, as well as contact mines like the Sadaf 01 – specifically in the approaches to Kharg Island and Bandar Abbas – to deter amphibious landings.

Additionally, the IRGCN’s asymmetric doctrine suggests the potential for Special Forces/combat diver attacks against naval units in port or at anchor, utilizing MAHAM 4-type timed limpet mines.

Under these operational conditions, Counter-Mine (CM) strategies must be conducted through preliminary left-of-launch strikes against storage depots and minelaying platforms – a tactic employed by both the USN and the Russian Federation in the Ukrainian conflict – followed by MCM (Mine Countermeasures) operations against deployed ordnance. In this latter phase, while Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) provide significant utility for Search, Detection, and Classification (SDC), international subject matter experts maintain that effective Mine Warfare (MW) still requires specialized platforms capable of operating in high-risk contested environments where minefield boundaries remain ill-defined. This requirement is underscored by the fact that, despite the loss of primary minelaying vessels to U.S. strikes, Iran retains the capacity to seed or refresh minefields using small, fast-attack craft or Craft of Opportunity (COOP) operated by the Pasdaran.

It is therefore critical that MCM vessels are either deployable alongside the main fleet or pre-positioned in contested chokepoints. Given the persistent asymmetric threat, traditional clearance operations should ideally be reserved for the post-conflict phase to reopen commercial Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs). During active hostilities, UUVs should be utilized for contingency interventions or risk reduction within temporary break-in channels to facilitate power projection ashore, should conditions permit.

The Houthi movement also possesses a significant naval mine arsenal. However, due to bathymetric constraints, these are primarily deployable along the Yemeni littoral to counter Saudi Coalition forces, rather than for the strategic interdiction of the Bab El Mandeb – a task for which they employ other asymmetric vectors in synergy with Iran. 

In a broader sense, the deployment of naval mines generates a psychological impact that analysts have cogently summarized: “The mined area does not have to be everywhere, to be everywhere in the minds of those who must transit it…” implying that even a negligible number of mines can precipitate complex, high-intensity crisis scenarios.⁶

Unmanned Systems: The Proliferation of Multi-Domain Robotic Warfare

The proliferation of unmanned systems has cross-sectionally impacted all warfare domains – land, air, and sea. The operational effectiveness demonstrated by Ukrainian maritime drone strikes against Russian Federation naval units, both in ports of origin and on the high seas, serves as a definitive case study of the evolving nature of naval engagement.

In the underwater dimension, despite persistent challenges related to acoustic propagation for communications, unmanned platforms are driving significant shifts in tactical procedures and are increasingly integrated with traditional naval assets.

Beyond the extensive use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) and risk-mitigation for personnel, these platforms are now being effectively deployed as offensive vectors. This is further evidenced by the emergence of Unmanned Combat Underwater Vehicles (UCUVs), reportedly integrated into the inventories of the Al-Qassam brigades and Houthi militants.

To counter aerial threats, Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) have rapidly evolved ranging from soft kill solutions (electronic jamming, spoofing, and hijacking) to hard kill capabilities. These range from interceptor drones equipped with net-capture to High Energy Laser (HEL) systems, kinetic effectors, and High Power Microwave (HPM) systems. The latter utilize high-intensity electromagnetic pulses to irreparably damage a platform’s electronic circuitry, resulting in immediate loss of control and neutralization.

Furthermore, the implementation of Remote ID regulations in the civil sector provides a framework that may enhance military tracking and identification Friend-or-Foe (IFF) protocols.

Regarding underwater threats, electronic countermeasures such as the Mobile Jammer Target Emulator (MJTE) are under development to counter UCUV attacks, while several nations have initiated regulatory frameworks for the governance and management of underwater battlespace.

A critical requirement remains the enhancement of capabilities to counter swarms of low-cost unmanned vehicles operating in a coordinated manner, which can saturate or severely degrade traditional defensive layers. In this context, HPM systems – which require only electrical power and offer continuous duty cycles without cooling – induced downtime – appear to be the most viable long-term solution for swarm interdiction, where conventional kinetic or laser engagement is often too slow or cost-prohibitive.

Moreover, Chinese research suggests that even fiber-optic guided drones – which have proven resilient to traditional Electronic Warfare (EW) in the Ukrainian theater – would likely succumb to high-power microwave pulses.

Attacks on Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI)

Strategic submarine fiber-optic cables traverse both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab El Mandeb, where they are highly vulnerable to proxy-led interdiction – either via the accidental dragging of anchors by seemingly innocuous vessels or through deliberate underwater sabotage, similar to the Nord Stream gas pipeline kinetic strikes in the Baltic Sea.

This evolving threat landscape is driving the emergence of a new operational doctrine known as Seabed Warfare, central to this doctrine is the persistent maintenance of Seabed-to-Space Situational Awareness (S3A). This framework is designed to detect anomalous behavior, triggering subsequent inspection and exploration of the seabed where Critical Undersea Infrastructure (CUI) is located, primarily through the deployment of UUVs to mitigate threats or assess damage.

This new warfare paradigm requires the seamless integration of all assets operating within the underwater battlespace, traditionally involving Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), MW, and diving operations.

However, deploying unmanned systems in the subsurface dimension entails greater technical challenges than surface operations, primarily due to acoustic propagation constraints which limit communication bandwidth and range. This has spurred intensive Research and Development (R&D) efforts, often in synergy with civilian research centers, to enhance the mission endurance and operational autonomy of underwater drones across vast CUI networks.

Consequently, it is crucial to consolidate capabilities in automated underwater docking stations (for power recharging and mission data transfer), underwater mesh networks (Internet of Underwater Things – IoUT), and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. By providing unmanned platforms with increased autonomous decision-making capacity, these technologies compensate for the inherent sub-surface communication latency.

Simultaneously, seafloor sensor arrays and the dual-use of fiber-optic cables via Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technology are becoming essential for the detection and tracking of sub-surface threat vectors.

In summary, while there is an urgent requirement to counter threats that interdict commercial transit through maritime chokepoints and disrupt hydrocarbon flows, there is an equally pressing need to protect both the sub-sea cables – which serve as the backbone of global economic interconnectivity –and the physical sub-surface infrastructure for energy transfer, such as gas and oil pipelines.

Conclusion

As noted by prominent geopolitical analysts Dario Fabbri, the geostrategic postulate remains more valid than ever:

“He who commands the sea possesses a distinct advantage, both offensively and defensively. He commands communication lines that require neither creation nor maintenance, can evade inland-originated aggression, establish the primary defensive perimeter within the depths, deprive adversaries of logistics, and lead the international system by regulating the flow of global commerce.”⁷

Contemporary maritime dominance mandates that great powers exercise effective thalassocracy: controlling strategic chokepoints, ensuring Freedom of Navigation (FONOPs), and maintaining indispensability to allied networks. For the United States, restoring secure transit through the Strait of Hormuz is not merely an energy security concern, but a strategic imperative to maintain hegemony over global markets before the rapidly expanding People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) occupies the resulting power vacuums. While great powers pursue these objectives through complex and diversified carrier strike groups and fleet architectures, regional actors such as Iran pursue them via asymmetric warfare. This demonstrates that the technological gap can be mitigated through the integrated employment of naval mines, unmanned systems, coastal defense missiles, and FIAC (Fast Inshore Attack Craft) swarms.

In this landscape, the persistent availability of ISR-T (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting) capabilities – encapsulated in the S3A framework – and the rigorous monitoring of pattern of life” constitute the essential prerequisites for modern maritime operations. The Hormuz theater has specifically underscored the necessity for robust MCM capabilities capable of executing the full MCM kill chain – detect, classify, identify, and neutralize – integrated with sub-surface surveillance arrays and fiber-optic technologies such as Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS). The multi-layered threat environment – comprising mines, missiles, UAVs/USVs, and fast-attack craft – demands a sophisticated multi-threat response capability and increasingly seamless interoperability with the civilian infrastructures managing sub-sea communications.

The prevailing trend toward casualty cross-reduction is accelerating the deployment of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS). The operational success already demonstrated by surface and underwater drones across multiple conflict theaters provides an unequivocal signal regarding the future trajectory of naval combat. However, overly ambitious transitions from conventional to fully autonomous architectures may prove counterproductive: unmanned systems possess tangible vulnerabilities – such as entanglement nets, floating cables, and physical hostile seizure – and face significant operational constraints in harsh sea state conditions. Consequently, a phased approach to remote integration is required, validated through realistic operational exercises such as those conducted by NATO, which embed military subject matter experts alongside industrial technicians in high-fidelity field conditions.

The consolidation of emerging and disruptive technologies – artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and quantum computing – will finalize this transformation, enabling levels of automation capable of autonomously managing system responses and asset coordination. This process necessitates a parallel evolution of international law – ranging from UNCLOS to international humanitarian law – to define the legal status of unmanned platforms and address the inevitable ethical dilemmas posed by lethal autonomous weapons systems capable of kinetic engagement without direct human intervention.

Massimo Vianello is a retired Italian Navy Admiral who graduated from the Italian Naval Academy. Specializing in underwater weaponry and Mine Countermeasures (MCM), he has commanded coastal minehunters, a frigate, and the sailing vessel Amerigo Vespucci. His extensive operational experience spans critical theaters, from the First Persian Gulf War and Operation Allied Force to Operation Mare Nostrum. As a former Commander of both the Mine Countermeasures Forces and the 29th Naval Task Group, Admiral Vianello now leverages his expertise as an Analyst for the Center for Geopolitical and Strategic Maritime Studies (CESMAR), where he serves as a leading subject matter expert on sub-surface warfare and undersea security.

Giovanni Giorguli is a retired Italian Navy Master Chief Petty Officer and an Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) pioneer with almost 40 years of expertise in Mine Countermeasures and underwater technology. He is a veteran of international operations such as those in the Persian Gulf, Operation Allied Force, various NATO missions, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup security framework in Qatar. Throughout his career, he served as a key instructor and searider, shaping Italy’s national underwater tactics and doctrine. A Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, he has authored and contributed to publications on Seabed Warfare and subsea infrastructure protection. He is currently an analyst at the Center for Geopolitical and Strategic Maritime Studies (CESMAR).

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views or policy of any organization with which they are affiliated. No organizational endorsement is implied or intended.

References

1. Various Authors, “Visione Strategica dell’Underwater warfare”, Rome, Italian Navy General Staff, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/4/13/what-do-we-know-about-sea-mines-in-and-around-the-strait-of-hormuz.

2. H I Sutton, “Iranian submarine forces”, Covert Shores, 16 May 2019.

3. H I Sutton, “Demystified new low profile Iranian SDV”, Covert Shores, 10 May 2015.

4. H I Sutton, “Iranian Nazir-1 XLUUV submarine drone”, Covert Shores, 11 July 2020.

5. H I Sutton, “New Iranian weaponized underwater drone”, Covert Shores, 16 March 2022.

6. Mohammad Mansour, “What do we know about sea mines in and around the Strait of Hormuz?”, Al Jazeera, 13 April 2026,  https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/4/13/what-do-we-know-about-sea-mines-in-and-around-the-strait-of-hormuz.

7. Dario Fabbri, “Geopolitica umana”, Milan, Edizioni Gribaudo, 2024. 

Featured image: An IRGCN fast patrol boat with naval mines. (Courtesy of Tasnim News Agency)

Iran War Topic Week

By James Jackson

Operation Epic Fury began on February 28, 2026, with objectives unrelated to commercial shipping: destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and their manufacturing plants, destroy its navy, sever its proxies, and foreclose a nuclear weapon. The strait was open when the bombs fell. On March 4, Iran closed the strait in response to the strikes. What had been a campaign against Iranian military power became, by consequence, a campaign to reopen a waterway the United States had helped shut. Three months later, the strait is still closed, though not due to any failure of skill at sea. Aegis-equipped American ships have compiled a near-perfect intercept record against Iranian coastal cruise missiles, drones, and small-boat swarms. Iranian launch sites, radars, and command nodes are being struck on schedule. Yet the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ irregular forces – mobile anti-ship missiles, drones, and fast-boat flotillas dispersed along the coast – remain largely intact. The strait is still (at the time of this writing) in dispute.

Iran now runs a permission regime, issuing IRGC transit clearances and waving favored flags through. Under Project Freedom, U.S. escorts briefly pushed individual hulls through the Omani waters along the strait’s southern side, but this effort was terminated in early May. Three months into the campaign, ordinary commercial transit has collapsed to under a tenth of its pre-conflict volume and stayed there.¹ Tankers and boxships are still routing around the Cape of Good Hope, war-risk premiums for Western-linked hulls remain prohibitive, and the flow of commerce the United States went to war to restore has not returned. No amount of additional tactical excellence is bringing it back.

Whether the United States was wise to start this war is a separate question, and not the one this essay addresses. The strikes on Iran were in theory a choice to move from one state of affairs to a better one. They produced the opposite. The strait was open when the campaign began; Iran closed it in response to the strikes, and the commerce the United States sought to protect collapsed. But the war was fought, and fighting it taught what the decision (and strategy) missed. One can think the war a mistake and still find the analysis useful.

Destroying Iranian launchers was never going to reopen the strait, no matter how many the Navy hits.  Whether the strait stays closed gets decided each morning in the war-risk syndicates of London and the risk committees of the world’s shipping lines, in numbers no destroyer can reach. They hold a veto no warship can override. The Navy does not choose this fight or set its aim; it executes the policy it is handed. So the burden falls where Clausewitz put it: on the policymakers and the President who set the war’s objective. Until they accept that reopening the strait is an economic and political act rather than a targeting problem, the Navy can win every tactical engagement while the nation will remain on track to lose the war.  

What Is Actually Being Contested

Planning to win wars must begin with the aim in mind. The United States is not trying to sink the Iranian navy. Rather, it is trying to reestablish the flow of seaborne commerce. That aim defines the object of the contest, and the object is not the water. A strait is closed not when ships cannot pass but when the people who own the cargo and insure the hull decide the cost of passing exceeds the cost of going around. That decision is a financial calculation, and it forms the decisive point of a chokepoint war. Whoever controls the calculation controls the strait.

For Alfred Thayer Mahan and Julian Corbett, the most prominent theorists of modern sea power, command of the sea was a physical condition: the ability to use the sea and deny its use to the enemy. In today’s global economy, where moving goods depends as much on insurance, credit, and confidence as on hulls and engines, that condition is necessary but no longer enough. A destroyer can shield a ship, but it cannot lower that ship’s insurance bill or convince an owner that next week’s voyage will be uneventful. Command of the sea has slipped from the gun line to the insurance ledger, and the Navy did not move with it. Sea control has become an actuarial condition: whether the strait can be used is decided by the price underwriters put on the risk of crossing it – the same arithmetic an actuary applies to any hazard – not by which navy wins the day’s engagement.

The number that decides a chokepoint is the war-risk premium: the surcharge a hull pays to sail through a war zone. It tracks the persistence of a threat, not the odds that any given attack is intercepted. An underwriter is indifferent to the ninety-nine missiles that were stopped. They price the hundredth, the catastrophic loss that bankrupts the voyage, and the standing chance that it recurs tomorrow. A single ship lost undoes the record of a thousand intercepts.

The Red Sea already showed this. From January 2024, U.S. and coalition warships ran the same high-intercept campaign against the Houthis that is now underway against Iran, and ran it well. Yet container traffic through the Suez Canal fell roughly seventy-five percent and stayed down from 2024 onward through the present, with no recovery even during lulls in Houthi activity.² Carriers kept routing the long way around Africa, adding some 4,000 miles and ten to fourteen days per voyage and absorbing a roughly nine-percent cut in effective global shipping capacity, because the market was not pricing the kill ratio.³ It was pricing the chance that one drone would get through and the certainty that the threat had no announced end. The shooting was excellent. Yet the strait stayed shut.

Hormuz will reproduce this at greater intensity: a narrower, mineable waterway overlooked by mobile coastal missiles along the whole Iranian littoral, carrying roughly a fifth of the world’s oil.⁴ The premium will not fall simply because Iranian launchers are destroyed. It will fall only when the market believes the threat has durably ended, and belief in an ending is exactly what an open-ended bombing campaign cannot supply.

The Asymmetry of Doubt

The cost-per-intercept problem is by now well documented: multimillion-dollar SM-2 and SM-6 interceptors spent on twenty-thousand-dollar drones, nearly a billion dollars in such rounds burned in the Red Sea alone, and a vertical-launch magazine drawn down faster than industry can replace it, consuming the very interceptors the fleet needs for the Pacific.⁵ The Vice Chief of Naval Operations has said plainly that a protracted fight will demand more magazine depth than the force possesses.⁶

But munitions are the lesser asymmetry. The greater one is doubt. The attacker’s product is uncertainty, which is cheap, requires no successful hit, and can be sustained indefinitely from a cave with a launch rail. The defender’s product is confidence, which cannot be manufactured at all. Confidence is earned slowly and lost instantly. You cannot prove a negative to an underwriter. Premiums rise in an afternoon and fall over quarters, because the market has a long memory for danger and a short one for safety. The defender is buying a perishable good with a currency the adversary can debase at will.

None of this leaves the defender powerless. It means the defender’s familiar tools such as more intercepts and strikes are the wrong ones. The moves that actually lower the price of risk lie outside the peacetime paradigm, and a state willing to use them has them: it can shoulder the risk itself through a government guarantee or turn the same economic weapon back on Tehran by choking the oil exports that fund the war. The defender has options. Firepower aimed at launchers just isn’t one of them.

Here the kinetic campaign becomes counterproductive.  The fighting created the war zone, and the strikes cannot clear it. Their visible open-endedness sustains the one signal the underwriter cares about.  To a risk committee, an ongoing high-intensity bombing campaign is evidence the danger is still live enough to require bombing. The campaign meant to reopen the strait reads, to the people who decide whether it is open, as a daily bulletin that it remains a war zone.

The Stand-In Force, Turned Around

The Marine Corps will recognize what Iran is doing, because Iran is running the Marine Corps’ own playbook. Low-signature, mobile, lethal, and cheap, operating from inside the contested zone to deny freedom of maneuver: this is the Stand-in Forces concept made manifest, except that the stand-in force is Iranian and the maneuver denied is American.⁷ Coastal launchers and drones have held multi-billion-dollar capital ships at arm’s length and pushed carrier strike groups into recessed defensive boxes, just as the Houthis forced U.S. carriers out of the Bab el-Mandeb and sent the George H.W. Bush carrier strike group the long way around Africa.⁸

The instinct is to treat this as a targeting problem and answer it with better sensors and more interceptors. That misreads the lesson. What a stand-in force generates is doubt, the steady pressure it keeps on an adversary’s economic lifelines. The IRGC Navy has sunk little and priced a great deal. That should change how the Marine Corps measures and resources the concept. A force designed to destroy enemy hardware fights where the United States is wealthiest and most vulnerable to cost-imposition; redesign it to manufacture uncertainty in an adversary’s commercial flows and it fights where great powers are thinnest-skinned and least able to hit back. The right yardstick is cost and uncertainty imposed per dollar spent, and by that measure Iran is winning at a rate no munitions budget can match.

The Free-Rider Tell

The clearest proof that the contested good is confidence rather than control is sitting in the strait right now, transiting unmolested. Chinese-flagged and Russian-flagged vessels move through it under bilateral understandings with Tehran, using the friction the U.S. Navy generates as a shield for their own commerce.

This would be impossible if the good in dispute were physical control of water, which is indivisible. You cannot grant one ship partial control of a strait. But you can grant selective confidence, a promise not to target a particular flag, because confidence is divisible and assignable. That safe passage can be parceled out flag by flag shows what Tehran actually commands: the risk of passage. It is in the indemnity business, not the sea-lane business. The United States, sustaining a high-risk environment from which it has exempted its two principal competitors, is paying the full premium to buy Beijing and Moscow a discount.

1987: The Flag, Not the Gun

None of this is unprecedented. The United States solved the same problem in these waters thirty-nine years ago. During the Tanker War, Iran imposed doubt on Gulf shipping with mines and IRGC small boats, the 1980s edition of today’s drones and coastal missiles, and Kuwait’s tankers became uninsurable in practice. What reopened commerce was not the destruction of Iran’s navy. The largest kinetic action, Operation Praying Mantis, lasted a day and came late.⁹ It was Operation Earnest Will, and at its core Earnest Will was a flag, not a gun. By reflagging eleven Kuwaiti tankers as American, the United States moved the risk of those hulls onto the U.S. government and its implicit guarantee, collapsing the war-risk burden that had priced them off the water.¹⁰ The escort made the guarantee credible. What the cargo owners paid for was the promise behind it.

Two further features of 1987 matter for 2026. The commitment was tied to a war-termination framework, UN Security Council Resolution 598, so the market could see an ending rather than an open-ended campaign. And it was bounded precisely because it was a guarantee rather than a war. Critics attacked it as an open-ended commitment, which forced it to define its limits.¹¹ The decisive maritime weapon of the Tanker War was a credible, bounded, state-backed promise. The Navy made the promise believable. It did not make the promise, and no amount of bombing could have.

Redesigning the Campaign Around the Premium

If sea control is an actuarial condition, the campaign must drive down the price of risk directly rather than chase the launchers that are only its distant cause. Four moves follow.

First, re-create the guarantee. Let Washington itself cover the war risk that private insurers now refuse. The same thing occurred in 1987 when it put the American flag on Kuwaiti tankers, except today the tool is the U.S. Treasury’s guarantee rather than the flag. This is the single most powerful move available, and the one thing the Navy can support but cannot do on its own. Driving down the price of passage is the goal. Every strike exists only to make that guarantee believable.

Second, sell predictability, because predictability is what the market prices. A scheduled, published, escorted transit window, a convoy that reliably sails Tuesday, is worth more to an underwriter than an unannounced ninety-nine-percent intercept rate, because it converts an open-ended threat into a bounded and plannable one. What the market is buying is a schedule it can plan around.

Third, set a military goal the Navy can actually reach. Wiping out Iran’s coastal forces is not it. They are cheap, scattered, and replaced faster than the Navy can replace the missiles it spends shooting them down. But making it unlikely enough that any single attacker gets through, unlikely enough for an insurer to live with, is reachable. Pursue it with layered, cost-sustainable defenses, including the directed-energy systems the Navy is now fielding, and the fleet stops burning through magazines better preserved for a Pacific fight on an Middle Eastern attrition contest it is positioned to lose.¹²

Fourth, signal the ending. Because the price of risk depends on how open-ended the danger looks, a credible, stated path to ending the war is itself a force that brings that price down. Escalating does the opposite: it stretches out the very uncertainty the campaign seeks to end. A limited objective is not restraint for its own sake. Rather, it is a way to move the market. All of this means keeping a different scoreboard. In a chokepoint like this one, the numbers that matter are the price of insuring a voyage and the count of ships actually sailing . Those two figures tell you who holds the strait today, the way a fleet on station and an enemy kept away once did. They are the numbers this campaign is not moving.

Misassigned, Not Defeated

The Navy’s problem in the Strait of Hormuz is that it has been handed the wrong job. It is winning, with discipline and skill, every kinetic engagement in which it participates. But the war’s objectives cannot be achieved by destroying targets and killing the enemy. The war is over the price of doubt, and doubt cannot be killed. The strait will reopen when the underwriter’s veto is lifted, and lifting it is an economic and political act: a credible guarantee, a predictable corridor, and a visible ending. With the approach laid out above, the Navy can make that act credible. But it cannot bombard credibility it into being.

The warning runs past Iran and past the merits of this particular war. Consider what this war has shown. A regional power armed with cheap drones, mobile launchers, and the patience to keep the outcome in doubt has held a global chokepoint closed against the world’s premier fleet, and sold safe passage through it to that fleet’s competitors while doing so. Whether the U.S. Navy can still secure the sea lanes it exists to protect was answered once in the Red Sea, and is being answered again off Hormuz. That lesson holds whatever one thinks of the decision to intervene. The instrument that secures the modern chokepoint is the credible guarantee, and the metric that scores it is the premium. A nation that grasps this can choose its chokepoint fights on terms it can win or decline them, clear-eyed about what victory would cost. A force that keeps counting intercepts will do neither: it will go on winning every engagement and losing every strait.

LtCol James Jackson is a career logistician in the U.S. Marines, and an operational and strategic planner currently assigned to US Cyber Command. He is a graduate of the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School at the U.S. Naval War College.

Endnotes

1. As of late May 2026, roughly day 89 of the campaign, commercial transit through the strait had collapsed to under ten percent of the pre-conflict baseline and had not normalized. Iran shifted in April from continuous closure to a permission-based regime, issuing IRGC transit clearances while continuing to fire on shipping; the tanker SANMAR HERALD was attacked on April 18 despite holding a valid clearance. See Windward, “Three Months Into Operation Epic Fury: How Iran Restructured Hormuz Instead of Closing It” (May 27, 2026); USNI News, “Strait of Hormuz Commercial Transits at Lowest Level Since Operation Epic Fury Start” (May 1, 2026), citing Lloyd’s List; and GlobalSecurity.org, “Project Freedom: Strait of Hormuz, May 2026.” A roughly 70 percent drop reported by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Congressional Research Service reflects the opening weeks of the campaign rather than the sustained collapse measured three months in.

2. Container-vessel transits through the Suez Canal fell roughly 75 percent in 2024 against 2023 and had not recovered through mid-2025, persisting even through pauses in Houthi activity. See project44, “The Red Sea Crisis: Ceasefire Collapse Leaves Red Sea in Tumultuous State” (Aug. 21, 2025); and Coface, “Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea: Why Maritime Trade Is Still Not Smooth Sailing” (Dec. 29, 2025), which records container flows through Suez down by roughly 90 percent at the trough.

3. The Cape of Good Hope diversion adds approximately 4,000 nautical miles and 10–14 days to an Asia–Europe voyage. J.P. Morgan estimated the rerouting amounted to roughly a 30 percent increase in transit times and an approximately 9 percent reduction in effective global container shipping capacity. See J.P. Morgan Research, “The Impacts of the Red Sea Shipping Crisis”; and World Atlas, “How the Red Sea Shipping Crisis Affects Global Trade” (Apr. 2026).

4. On the share of seaborne oil transiting Hormuz and the waterway’s chokepoint geometry, see U.S. Energy Information Administration data as summarized in the CIMSEC call and contemporary reporting on Operation Epic Fury; for the operational character of the 2026 conflict, see Defense.info, “From Red Sea Defense to Epic Fury: How the U.S. Flipped the Drone Cost Equation” (Mar. 13, 2026).

5. On interceptor unit costs and the cost-exchange asymmetry, see Khyati Singh, “Navies Can’t Afford Expensive Solutions to Cheap Problems,” The Strategist / ASPI (Oct. 21, 2025); CSIS, “Cost and Value in Air and Missile Defense Intercepts” (Oct. 11, 2024); and “The Hidden Cost of a Missile: Why the Headlines Get Cost Wrong,” War on the Rocks (Nov. 18, 2025), which estimates roughly $1 billion in munitions expended defending Red Sea shipping since late 2023.

6. Adm. James Kilby, then acting Chief of Naval Operations, on the need for greater magazine depth in a protracted conflict, as reported in Fox News, “Navy’s Kilby on Houthi Missiles and Red Sea Costs” (2025).

7. Headquarters Marine Corps, A Concept for Stand-in Forces, (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters Marine Corps, 2021), 4.

8. On the deterrence of U.S. carrier strike groups from the Bab el-Mandeb and the resulting circuitous routing, see the CIMSEC call for articles, “War with Iran” (2026); and reporting on carrier strike group dispositions during the Red Sea campaign.

9. Operation Praying Mantis (Apr. 18, 1988) was a single-day action launched after USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine. See “Operation Praying Mantis,” and David B. Crist, “Joint Special Operations in Support of Earnest Will,” Joint Force Quarterly (Autumn/Winter 2001–02).

10. On the reflagging of eleven Kuwaiti tankers as U.S.-flagged vessels and the transfer of risk to the U.S. government, see “Operation Earnest Will”; Richard A. Mobley, “Intelligence Support During Operation Earnest Will, 1987–88,” Central Intelligence Agency; and Veterans Breakfast Club, “Before Today’s War with Iran, There Was the Tanker War” (Mar. 16, 2026).

11. On UNSCR 598 as a termination framework and the domestic controversy over the open-ended nature of the commitment, see “Renewed Tensions in the Persian Gulf: Further War Powers Lessons from the Tanker War,” Just Security (2023).

12. On the Navy’s pivot toward directed-energy defenses (e.g., HELIOS aboard USS Preble) as a response to the cost-exchange and magazine-depth problems, see “How to Save the U.S. Navy from Becoming a Bunch of Old ‘Battleships,'” 19FortyFive (Feb. 14, 2026).

Works Cited

Coface. “Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea: Why Maritime Trade Is Still Not Smooth Sailing.” December 29, 2025. https://www.coface.com/news-economy-and-insights/houthi-attacks-in-the-red-sea-why-maritime-trade-is-still-not-smooth-sailing

Crist, David B. “Joint Special Operations in Support of Earnest Will.” Joint Force Quarterly, Autumn/Winter 2001–02. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA403506.pdf

Center for International Maritime Security. “Call for Articles: War with Iran.” 2026. https://cimsec.org/call-for-articles-war-with-iran/

Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Cost and Value in Air and Missile Defense Intercepts.” October 11, 2024. https://www.csis.org/analysis/cost-and-value-air-and-missile-defense-intercepts

Congressional Research Service. “Iran Conflict and the Strait of Hormuz: Impacts on Oil, Gas, and Other Commodities.” March 11, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45281

Council on Foreign Relations. “The Strait of Hormuz: A U.S.-Iran Maritime Flash Point.” 2026. https://www.cfr.org/articles/strait-hormuz-us-iran-maritime-flash-point

Defense.info. “From Red Sea Defense to Epic Fury: How the U.S. Flipped the Drone Cost Equation.” March 13, 2026. https://defense.info/featured-story/2026/03/from-red-sea-defense-to-epic-fury-how-the-u-s-flipped-the-drone-cost-equation/

GlobalSecurity.org. “Project Freedom: Strait of Hormuz, May 2026.” https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/project-freedom.htm

J.P. Morgan Research. “The Impacts of the Red Sea Shipping Crisis.” https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/supply-chain/red-sea-shipping

Just Security. “Renewed Tensions in the Persian Gulf: Further War Powers Lessons from the Tanker War.” 2023. https://www.justsecurity.org/87650/renewed-tensions-in-the-persian-gulf-further-war-powers-lessons-from-the-tanker-war/

Mobley, Richard A. “Intelligence Support During Operation Earnest Will, 1987–88.” Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Fighting-Iran.pdf

19FortyFive. “How to Save the U.S. Navy from Becoming a Bunch of Old ‘Battleships.'” February 14, 2026. https://www.19fortyfive.com/2026/02/how-to-save-the-u-s-navy-from-becoming-a-bunch-of-old-battleships/

project44. “The Red Sea Crisis: Ceasefire Collapse Leaves Red Sea in Tumultuous State.” August 21, 2025. https://www.project44.com/supply-chain-insights/the-red-sea-crisis-ceasefire-collapse-leaves-red-sea-in-tumultuous-state/

Singh, Khyati. “Navies Can’t Afford Expensive Solutions to Cheap Problems.” The Strategist (Australian Strategic Policy Institute), October 21, 2025. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/navies-cant-afford-expensive-solutions-to-cheap-problems/

Featured Image: The Thailand-flagged cargo ship Mayuree Naree engulfed in black smoke in the Strait of Hormuz. (Royal Thai Navy photo)

By Dmitry Filipoff

For the next two weeks, CIMSEC will be featuring writing submitted to our Call for Articles on maritime conflict with Iran. 

The maritime domain has featured prominently in the Iran War and heavily shaped negotiations over the post-war future. The world economy has been strongly affected, with the military contest over the Strait of Hormuz reverberating across markets. 

Below are the articles and authors being featured, and will be updated with further submissions as the series unfolds.

“The Price of Doubt: Sea Control in the Strait of Hormuz,” by James Jackson
“Hormuz and the Era of Asymmetry: Sea Mines, Unmanned Systems, and the Redefinition of Naval Power,” by Admiral Massimo Vianello (Ret.) and Master Chief Petty Officer Giovanni Giorguli (Ret.)
“The Insurance Chokepoint: War-Risk Pricing as an Instrument of Maritime Coercion,” by Bruce Randolph Tizes
“The Hormuz Closure and the Limits of Sanctions: How Russia Benefited from Iran’s Chokepoint Weapon,” by Rustam Taghizade
“Asymmetric Alliance Strategy: An Israeli Maritime Perspective on the Iran War,” by Ehud Eiran
“Chokepoint Hormuz: Epic Fury and Italy’s Mediterranean Strategy,” by Rear Adm. Roberto Domini (Ret.)
“The Iran War Highlights New Realities and Changing Paradigms,” by Paul Viscovich
“The Hormuz Strait Crisis Confirms Nodal Control Will Dominate Maritime Geopolitics,” by Ludvico Domini
“Convert Merchants into Unmanned Ships to Manage Risk in the Strait of Hormuz,” by Alexander Lott, Kristjan Tabri, and Angela Sooba
“American Naval Mines Can Be Decisive Against Iran,” by Ronald Stewart and Scott Truver

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: Aircraft is staged for flight operations on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in support of Operation Epic Fury, Mar. 3, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo)