US strikes on Iranian military positions around the Strait of Hormuz have weakened Tehran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping, but the large American military presence protecting the waterway is raising concerns about the longer-term strain on the US Navy.
Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, a former National Security Council staff member and Senate Armed Services Committee policy director, said the strikes had reduced Iran’s ability to monitor and target vessels moving through the Strait.
“They take out radars and other beaconing sensors so that the IRGC has less accurate targeting and less situational awareness of the movement of ships,” Montgomery said.
He said the latest strike on Larak Island also destroyed rocket launchers that could potentially be used to deploy naval mines, including mines equipped with magnetic or acoustic sensors.
“This was an effort to prevent Iran from mining transit lane, and probably the southern transit lane that’s closest to Oman right now,” he said.
Iran’s ability to disrupt shipping has been reduced but not eliminated, while the volume of oil leaving the Gulf remains below pre-war levels.
Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a senior intelligence analyst at London-based maritime intelligence company Windward, said preliminary figures for August showed crude oil flows at between two-thirds and three-quarters of pre-war levels.
Some additional oil is being moved through alternative routes, including Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline and the southern maritime corridor through Oman.
But establishing the precise volume of oil leaving the region remains difficult because some vessels are operating without their normal tracking signals.
“The average of 30 vessels a day, he didn’t say over what period, but certainly these transits are being done dark, so it’s very hard to get visibility,” Bockmann said.
For shipowners willing to accept the risks, however, the disruption has created unusually high returns.
Bockmann said the spot rate for chartering a tanker for shuttle runs through the Strait reached $650,000 a day on Friday, about 27 times the break-even level.
“So, high risk, high rewards, very high insurance premiums, but there are ship owners that are prepared to send their vessels in because of the enormous amounts of money that can be made,” she said.
The continued movement of tankers is also heavily dependent on US military protection, creating a separate problem for Washington: how long it can sustain a large deployment in the Middle East without weakening its ability to respond elsewhere.
Montgomery said reports that senior US commanders had warned about the risks of maintaining so many forces in the region were credible.
“For the combatant commanders, this is a loss of current capability,” he said.
The deployment means fewer US naval forces are available in the Pacific, potentially weakening deterrence against China and reducing Washington’s ability to reassure allies including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines.
Montgomery also warned that the consequences could extend several years into the future.
“Having 18 to 20 destroyers and two carrier strike groups stationed in the Middle East means that one, two, three years from now, we’re going to have a lot less destroyers and carrier strike groups available for deployment,” he said.
He pointed to previous US deployments in the Middle East, arguing that sustained commitments had contributed to a later shortage of forces available elsewhere.
“We have done this before,” Montgomery said. “And about four years later, we had the first month ever where no U.S. carrier strike groups were available for deployment.”
The immediate deployment can be sustained for some time, he said, but the longer-term consequences could leave the Navy less prepared for future confrontations.
“The challenge isn’t readiness in nine, 12, 15 months, but the readiness of the forces that are doing these extended deployments in two, three, four years from now,” Montgomery said.
For the shipping industry, the situation could eventually settle into what Bockmann described as a “new normal”, with vessels continuing to use the southern corridor while negotiations determine the future management of the Strait.
The shift reflects the wider consequences of the war for global energy markets. Before the conflict, more than 20 million barrels of oil a day moved out of the Gulf region, much of it through the Strait of Hormuz.
For now, US strikes and naval protection are helping keep significant volumes of oil moving. But the longer the deployment continues, the harder the balance becomes between protecting one of the world’s most important energy routes and preserving US military capacity for threats elsewhere.
