Could Iran Win a Naval War Against America?

James Holmes

Security, Middle East

And would they be crazy enough to try?

Key Point: The Persian Gulf could be the flashpoint between Iran and the United States.

Would Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, could it, and would the United States reply by force of arms if Tehran made the attempt?

Maybe, maybe, and yes. There is precedent: it assailed merchant and naval shipping during the “Tanker War” of the 1980s. Then, it was attacking the export earnings of its archfoe Iraq. The United States, the mullahs’ Great Satan, isn’t nearly so dependent as was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on merchantmen plying the Persian Gulf. Washington nonetheless sees important interests at stake in this contested waterway—and that gives Tehran an opportunity to inflict pain should it choose.

America may not depend on Persian Gulf oil and natural gas, but its allies and trading partners do. It maintains close alliances in the region through the Gulf Cooperation Council, and would shirk these commitments at its peril. Nor could Washington allow a substantial fraction of U.S. maritime might, namely the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, to be stranded because Iranian forces had interposed themselves between Gulf waters and the broader Indian Ocean. Economic, diplomatic, and martial imperatives add up to a rationale that neither the Trump White House nor any other could ignore.

Short of quitting the Gulf region outright, the United States must fight to uphold its standing there.

Prediction is a fool’s errand in the mercurial world of international politics and warfare, but it is possible to glimpse certain broad contours of a naval war between the Islamic Republic and the United States. Iran can turn maritime geography to advantage, for one thing, waging irregular maritime warfare in and around the Strait of Hormuz. This is a setting with which Iranian mariners are intimately acquainted and where they bestride the home ground. Never discount the homefield advantage.