Iran War Topic Week

By Alexander Lott, Kristjan Tabri, and Angela Sooba

Introduction

Reportedly, approximately 20,000 seafarers on board some 2,000 ships, including tankers, bulk carriers, cargo ships, and cruise ships, were stranded in the Persian Gulf due to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The United Nations warned that given that the Strait of Hormuz is used for the transport of a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG), as well as a third of fertilizer components, its closure to international navigation would result in a global economic crisis.

Would it be possible for ships to undertake the passage through danger zones, such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, autonomously via shore-based control centers? Could crew members disembark for the inbound transit and then board the outbound ships in the ports far from the theater of war? Such a method could substantially change the risk calculus affecting commercial shipping and the safety of navigation in dangerous waters.

Potential Use of Unmanned Ships in War Zones for the Protection of Seafarers

Most of the stranded ships fly a neutral flag. In the context of the naval warfare between the United States and Iran, neutral merchant vessels are legally entitled to continue navigating through the Strait of Hormuz under the right of transit passage.

There is a mismatch between what the shipping companies can do legally and what they have decided to do in practice. The seafarers need to return home and international trade needs to resume flowing. Yet the shipping companies have mostly decided to avoid entering the Strait of Hormuz. This is due to the risk of Iran’s attacks on merchant vessels and the danger of striking a naval mine in the suspected Iranian minefield in the international traffic separation scheme (TSS) located in the Omani part of the Strait of Hormuz.

In this context, there is a great danger to seafarers’ right to life. In the shipping companies’ risk-reward calculus, this seems to serve as one of the key factors that deters them from entering the Strait of Hormuz despite the promise of lucrative trade. The insurance companies have confirmed that the shipping companies’ reluctance to transit through the Strait is not due to the insurance companies withdrawing coverage, but rather due to concerns about the safety of the crews. One insurer stated clearly that “The reason ships are not moving is not through a lack of insurance; it is a question of the risk to crew and vessel safety being assessed by the ship masters and owners as too high.”

Convertible unmanned merchant vessels can change this risk calculus and make these transits more favorable. No crew means no hostages or casualties. Removing the crew from the equation also removes the most direct form of political leverage. The vessel, its cargo, and the commercial interests involved would still be at risk – but the immediate threat to human life no longer. The risk that unmanned ships strike a mine or are attacked by Iranian naval or air drones remains. But the fact that such risk does not accompany a threat to life might be worth taking and could still promise profitable trade.

The term “unmanned ship” is used here to cover both remotely controlled vessels and, where communication cannot be guaranteed, vessels with a degree of autonomous capability if communication is lost. How could this method work in practice in the Strait of Hormuz to safeguard human life while enabling the safe transit of trade?

Navigator’s Operational and Technical Perspective

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has established a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) in the Strait of Hormuz – essentially a set of designated traffic corridors that keep inbound and outbound vessel traffic separated. A standard transit route through this sector consists of three legs and two waypoints, both of which fall inside a designated mine danger zone. The total distance of this specific transit is approximately 16 nautical miles (around 30 kilometers). For an unmanned transit, a reduced speed of around 10 knots (roughly 18 km/h) is advisable, giving an estimated transit time of approximately 96 minutes. The slower speed improves shore-based monitoring and reaction time, gives the vessel’s automated systems more opportunity to respond if communication is lost, and reduces the impact should the ship strike a mine.

From a navigator’s perspective, the idea of using remotely controlled and/or autonomous ships for this transit is technically possible. Most modern merchant vessels already have track-control or track-mode capability, meaning the ship can follow a pre-programmed route automatically. A slower speed is not necessarily a problem. In narrow and high-risk waters, it may actually improve monitoring, control, and reaction time.

A weakness to consider is the well-documented GPS-spoofing in the Strait of Hormuz. This phenomenon refers to feeding a vessel’s navigation system with false position data by an external signal. On a crewed vessel, the officer on watch can usually detect it by cross-checking the GPS position against radar, visual observations, the Automatic Identification System (AIS), compass heading, speed, and the planned route. On an unmanned vessel, that human cross-checking function would need to be replaced by redundant positioning systems, automated sensor comparison, and continuous monitoring from shore.

Unmanned ships do not yet have a recognized legal status under the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) – the rulebook that regulates how vessels behave around one another at sea. These rules assume there is a human being onboard making decisions and bearing responsibility. An unmanned vessel cannot meet that requirement as the rules currently stand.

In a busy, mixed-traffic environment like the Strait of Hormuz TSS, this creates both legal and practical safety problems. Until COLREGs are updated to address unmanned vessels, fully authorized unmanned transit remains off the table – regardless of what the technology can already do. But the rules are about to change. Indicatively, the IMO adopted the International Code of Safety for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) in May, and the Code will take effect in respect of cargo ships on July 1, 2026.

The use of unmanned ships in danger zones does not make the risk disappear. The mine threat, drone threat, seizure risk, insurance exposure, and political consequences remain. However, the key point is that the current commercial deadlock is caused mainly by the unacceptable risk to human life, not by financial risk. If the crew is removed before the high-risk transit and re-boards after the vessel exits the area, the risk-reward calculation changes significantly.

Can Merchant Ships Be Temporarily Converted for Unmanned Transit?

From a technical perspective, the idea of conducting unmanned merchant vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz is no longer purely theoretical. The industry already possesses many of the core technologies required for remotely controlled or partially autonomous navigation. The challenge lies less in inventing entirely new ships and more in rapidly adapting existing vessels for temporary unmanned operations in a high-risk conflict environment.

In practical terms, the envisaged unmanned transit would likely rely primarily on remotely controlled operation. It would correspond to the IMO’s definition of a Degree Three MASS, which stands for a remotely controlled vessel operating without seafarers onboard.

However, because communication in wartime conditions can never be guaranteed, the vessel would also require limited autonomous capability corresponding to Degree Four MASS concepts, enabling the ship to continue safe navigation independently if the communication link to shore is interrupted. Three technical components are critical for such operations, including reliable situational awareness, resilient communications, and control over propulsion and steering systems.

Situational Awareness in an Electronic Warfare Environment

Modern merchant vessels already carry extensive navigation sensor suites, including radar, GPS receivers, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, AIS, gyrocompasses, echo sounders, Electronic Chart Display and Information System, and increasingly camera-based monitoring systems. Together, these systems provide the situational awareness necessary for both remote operation and autonomous navigation.

The challenge is not the lack of sensors, but integrating them into a temporary remote control architecture capable of securely transmitting data to a remote operations center. Rather than deeply modifying existing bridge systems, a more practical crisis-time solution could involve installing standalone modular sensor packages dedicated to unmanned transit operations.

However, the Strait of Hormuz presents a uniquely hostile electromagnetic environment. GPS spoofing and GNSS jamming have already become common in the Persian Gulf region. This means that unmanned vessels cannot rely solely on satellite navigation. Reliable communication between the vessel and the remote operations center is perhaps the single greatest operational challenge in a danger zone. Conventional satellite communications systems remain vulnerable to jamming, cyber interference, and signal degradation during military operations. Potential solutions include multi-layered communication architectures combining satellite links, tactical radios with frequency hopping, line-of-sight systems, and mesh-networked relay communications. Yet no realistic system can guarantee uninterrupted connectivity throughout the transit.

This fundamentally changes the operational concept. The ship cannot depend entirely on continuous steering by humans from shore. Instead, it must be capable of entering a degraded autonomous mode whenever communication is temporarily lost. In practical terms, this could mean the vessel continues following a pre-approved navigation corridor at reduced speed while independently maintaining collision avoidance and route-keeping functions until communication is restored. This concept already resembles the operational logic used in autonomous military systems and unmanned aerial vehicles operating in contested electromagnetic environments.

Future-ready solutions increasingly combine radar mapping, inertial navigation systems, visual navigation, bathymetric matching, and sensor fusion algorithms capable of detecting inconsistencies between navigation inputs. Several commercial maritime autonomy systems are already moving in this direction. Kongsberg, Maritime Robotics, MindChip, Kraken, Sea Machines and several others have all demonstrated remote and autonomous vessel technologies using integrated sensor fusion and shore-based monitoring systems.

Ship Control Integration: The Real Engineering Bottleneck

The most difficult aspect of temporary vessel conversion is likely integration with propulsion and steering systems. Although modern ships increasingly rely on digital control systems using standards (National Marine Electronics Association, Controller Area Network bus architectures, etc.), every vessel possesses unique propulsion layouts, engine automation logic, steering interfaces, and alarm systems. No universal “plug-and-play” autonomous control package currently exists for merchant shipping. Traditionally, adapting autonomous control systems to each vessel individually would require lengthy engineering work, making rapid crisis deployment unrealistic.

This is an area where artificial intelligence and machine learning may significantly reduce the integration burden. One emerging concept is the so-called Self-Adaptive Artificial Captain (SAAC) developed by Estonian deep-tech company MindChip. Rather than manually programming every vessel-specific control logic, the system observes normal crewed operations and learns the relationship between helm commands, propulsion inputs, and the vessel’s physical response. In essence, the ship develops a behavioral model of itself. During ordinary manned voyages before entering the danger zone, the autonomous layer could silently record navigation actions and correlate them with the vessel’s movement, speed changes, turning behavior, and environmental conditions. Over time, the system builds an operational model capable of reproducing the required maneuvers autonomously or under remote supervision. This approach could dramatically shorten the time required to prepare vessels for unmanned transit in danger zones.

Conclusion: Technology is No Longer the Main Obstacle

Significant obstacles remain. Legal uncertainty under COLREGs, cybersecurity risks, insurance liabilities, rules of engagement, and political considerations all remain unresolved. Nevertheless, the core technologies required for temporary unmanned merchant transit already exist in various forms across the commercial maritime, defense, and autonomous systems sectors. The technical and engineering viability of the use of converted unmanned ships in danger zones is possible. The main problem that remains unanswered is whether states, insurers, and shipping companies are prepared to accept a fundamentally different balance between commercial risk and human risk in danger zones.

Alexander Lott is an Associate professor of international law and the law of the sea at the University of Tartu, Estonia and a Research professor (forsker I) at the Norwegian Centre for the Law of the Sea at the UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. He is the author of the books Hybrid Threats and the Law of the Sea: Use of Force and Discriminatory Navigational Restrictions in Straits (Brill, 2022) and The Estonian Straits: Exceptions to the Strait Regime of Innocent or Transit Passage (Brill, 2018), as well as the editor and co-author of the anthology Maritime Security Law in Hybrid Warfare (Brill De Gruyter, 2024). He is co-editor-in-chief of the book series International Straits of the World (Brill, 2026).

Kristjan Tabri is a tenured Professor of Marine Technology at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), where his research focuses on the structural response of marine systems subjected to complex loading conditions, including accidental impacts, hydrodynamic loads, and ice–structure interaction. In recent years, he has expanded his research to autonomous surface vessels, intelligent navigation, and self-adaptive control systems for maritime applications. He has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He is a member of the International Ship and Offshore Structures Congress (ISSC), serves on the board of the Estonian Association of Marine Industries, and is a board member of MEC Engineering Solutions. He is also a founding member and board member of MindChip, a deep-tech company developing intelligent control systems for autonomous vessels.

Angela Sooba is an active seafarer and licensed unlimited Master Mariner with over 20 years of international seafaring experience across a wide range of vessel types and trading areas worldwide, with an additional background as a senior Vessel Traffic Service operator. She has served as Head of Fleet and Head of Maritime Bureau at the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board, overseeing national maritime border security and JRCC Tallinn. She is currently a PhD researcher at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), focusing on the modernization of COLREGs for the safe integration of MASS and Dynamic Positioning vessels, combining regulatory analysis with the development and testing of practical engineering solutions.

Featured Image: Arrival of the ship CMA CGM Seine at Port 2000 in Le Havre on its maiden voyage. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

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)