Could Iran Carry Out Its Threat To Shut Down The Strait Of Hormuz?
The threat of Iran attempting toblockade the highly strategic Strait of Hormuzhas re-emerged amid the conflict that has now erupted between it and Israel. Over the years, the Iranians have amassed an arsenal ofcruiseandballistic missiles, andkamikaze drones, as well as a slew of maritime capabilities likenaval mines, well-suited to the task of shutting down the narrow waterway that links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. At the same time, there are questions about the extent to which Israeli strikes may have hampered Iran’s ability to follow through on such a threat, or even whether the regime in Tehran would want to take such a drastic step that would have global ramifications.
Readers can first get up to speed on the state of the current Israel-Iran conflict, which increasingly includes the targeting of energy infrastructure, in our reporting here.
A satellite image showing the general location of the Strait of Hormuz, and underscoring its strategic significance. Google Earth
Esmail Kosari (also sometimes written Esmaeil Kousari or Esmaeil Kowsari), currently a member of Iran’s parliament and head of the parliamentary committee on defense and national security, has said that closing the Strait of Hormuz is now under serious consideration, according to multiple reports today. The original source of the remarks from Kosari, who also holds the rank of Brigadier General in Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), appears to be a story from the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN).
“The Strait of Hormuz remains open and commercial traffic continues to flow uninterrupted,” according toan advisory notice yesterdayfrom the Joint Maritime Information Center of the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) office. “Currently, the JMIC has no indications of an increased threat to the Maritime.”
This followed earlier advisories from the UKMTO JMIC regarding tensions in the region after Israel began launching strikes on Iran on Thursday.
“At the time of this writing, no impact to shipping has been reported” in the region, Ambrey, an international maritime security firm, said in a separate Threat Circular put out after Israel began its latest campaign against Iran.
“The Strait of Hormuz “remains open and there are no indications of an increased threat to the Maritime Environment,” Nils Haupt, a spokesman for the Hapag-Lloyd shipping company, told TWZ directly. “At the moment, we do not see an urge to divert any vessels. But of course: we continue to monitor the situation on an hourly basis.”
Haupt also noted his company currently has no ships in either Iranian or Israeli waters.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which is just around 20 nautical miles across at its narrowest point, in times of heightened tensions in the past. How narrow the waterway is means that a significant portion of it falls within Iran’s national waters, which also overlap with those of Oman to the south. Normal maritime traffic flows in and out through a pair of established two-mile-wide shipping lanes. Roughly a fifth of all global oil shipments, and an even higher percentage of seaborne shipments, pass through the Strait each year. It is also an important route for the movement of liquid natural gas. Some 3,000 ships use it to get to and from the Persian Gulf each month.
A small IRGC patrol boat sails near a cargo ship in the Persian Gulf in 2024. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Closing the Strait of Hormuz would have immediate and potentially dramatic impacts on the global price of oil, which, in turn, could cause significant worldwide economic disruptions. Oil prices had already jumped after Israel launched its new campaign against Iran, which has now expanded to include Iranian energy targets.
Naval mines have historically been one of the most immediate options Iran has for trying to bring maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to a halt. Those mines could be seeded relatively rapidly by a wide array of vessels, including the IRGC’s extensive fleets of small fast attack boats.
Hossein Zohrevand/Fars News
The Iranian Navy’s separate fleets, including its midget submarines, could easily play a role in mine laying, too. Certain commercial vessels, especially those with onboard cranes, might also be able to assist.
This US Navy graphic gives a good sense of the various surface vessels and submarines in Iranian service. USN
Finding and clearing naval mines is an arduous process that presents significant risks even in otherwise benign environments. If Iran is truly serious about shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, an array of other threats would be layered on top to hamper the minesweeping efforts and otherwise block maritime traffic.
For one, IRGC and Iranian Navy vessels could also just directly attack or otherwise harass foreign warships and commercial vessels alike. Iran has also shown an ability and willingness to use teams riding in small boats todirectly plant limpet mineson the hulls of civilian ships, as well as board and seize them, in the past.
Many of Iran’s naval vessels, including various types of smaller fast attack craft, are armed with anti-ship cruise missiles. It has surface warships, semi-submersibles, and the aforementioned midget submarines that can launch attacks using torpedoes, anti-tank guided missiles, unguided artillery rockets, and other weapons, as well. Furthermore, Iranian maritime forces actively train to employ swarming tactics to help overwhelm any enemy defenses.
One of the many types of anti-ship cruise missile armed vessels in Iranian service. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In recent years, Iran has also fielded a number of cargo ships converted into ‘motherships’ for launching cruise and ballistic missiles and drones, as well as what it claims to be a ‘drone carrier.’ TWZ has explored the potential capabilities of these ships in the past, but the actual roles they might play in a stand-up confrontation around the Strait of Hormuz seem limited. Especially in this constrained environment, they would present large and easy-to-find targets for opponents to attack.
Iran's IRGC published a video today of launching a ballistic missile from their forward base Shahid Mahdavi (converted container ship). pic.twitter.com/400Y8DYPlr
A U.S. Department of Defense briefing slide from 2017 highlighting Iranian-supplied components of a captured Houthi suicide drone boat, referred to as the Shark-33, including a guidance system with GPS-assisted navigation and optical sensor capabilities. American authorities said at the time that it was capable of tracking and engaging moving targets, as well as stationary ones. DOD
Shore-launched anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as kamikaze drones, are another key component of the threats Iran could bring to bear in the Strait of Hormuz. This is only compounded by the narrowness of the waterway, which offers very limited room to maneuver, especially for large ships in the face of high-volume saturation attacks. The prospect of Iran turning the Strait into a super missile and drone engagement zone is a particularly worrisome scenario that TWZ has regularly called attention to in the past.
Israel’s strikes on Iran since Thursday do raise questions about the extent to which Iran could follow through on any threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. In addition to starting nuclear facilities, a particularly major focus of Israeli operations so far has been hobbling Iranian ballistic missile capabilities.
A satellite image from Planet Labs taken on June 12 had also raised the possibility of Israel targeting IRGC naval assets at a base on the Persian Gulf, but this remains very much unconfirmed. This is not a location the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has so far included in its otherwise expansive claims of targets struck across Iran. Iran’s ‘drone carrier’ Shahid Bagheri and Shahid Mahdavi mothership vessel have also been observed leaving their homeport in Bandar Abbas, where they would be very vulnerable to strikes.
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Planet imagery acquired 0725Z 13JUN2025 suggests the IRGCN naval base west of Bostanoo was likely targeted during Israel’s airstrikes. pic.twitter.com/bD2X9AqPPf
At the same, asTWZ has already noted in our reportingon the current Iran-Israel conflict, Iran has a significant ability to disperse its ballistic and cruise missiles. This, in turn, makes them immensely more difficult to track and attack preemptively, and creates additional uncertainty around where threats may suddenly emerge.
In addition, as mentioned earlier, the process of clearing naval mines, especially while under attack from other threats, is generally slow-going and dangerous. The U.S. Navy and others have been working to mitigate those risks, including through the increasing use of uncrewed surface and undersea platforms. Still, depending on how many mines Iran is able to lay, an operation to conclusively remove them could take a long time, potentially weeks or even months.
It is worth noting here that the campaign by Yemen’s Houthis against commercial shipping and foreign warships in and around the Red Sea since October 2023 has now proven out many of the exact capabilities and tactics that Iran could employ in the Strait of Hormuz. The Yemeni militants have also demonstrated how relatively limited threats to civilian vessels can have outsized impacts, even in the face of active foreign intervention.
The Barbados-flagged cargo ship True Confidence seen on fire after being hit by Houthi missiles last year. US Central Command
Despite U.S. and foreign forces patrolling the waters around the Red Sea and directly engaging Houthi targets ashore, commercial maritime traffic through that region had largely collapsed last year. Ships were forced to avoid the Suez Canal for a far longer route around the Horn of Africa, creating nearly $200 billion in new costs for the maritime shipping industry collectively. The situation has begun to improve somewhat as Houthi attacks have declined, particularly following a ceasefire deal between the United States and the Yemeni militants in May. However, there are fears that the trend will now reverse again given the current geopolitical climate.
Iran has already separately threatened to target U.S. and other foreign forces in the Middle East if they help defend Israel from its missile and drone attacks. The Iranians could seek to launch similar attacks on third parties in response to any efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
According to Reuters, Iran has warned the United States, United Kingdom and France that their bases and ships in the region will be targeted if they assist in the defense of Israel against ballistic missiles launched by Tehran.
All this being said, the Red Sea can still be bypassed, but there is no other outlet for commercial shipping from the Persian Gulf than the Strait of Hormuz. As such, Iran even attempting to blockade the waterway would present far further reaching regional and global implications that would draw responses on various levels from foreign powers around the world. In particular, Gulf Arab states, already historically at odds with Iran and aligned with the United States, would be pressured to act, or at least support some kind of intervention, given the impacts to their heavily oil and natural gas-dependent economies. Those countries could look to move oil and natural gas elsewhere across the Arabian Peninsula for export, but not being able to leverage established facilities on the Persian Gulf would still have impacts.
Iran has an acute awareness of the risks involved given its experience during the Tanker War sideshow to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, which prompted a major reaction from the U.S. military. The potential for a repeat of the Tanker War has since been an important factor in U.S. force posture and contingency response planning in the Middle East.
More recently, the U.S. military has taken steps to try to build a broader international coalition presence to help ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains free and open. From what has been seen so far, Iran has been looking to deter the U.S. military, especially, from taking an active offensive role alongside Israel in the current conflict. It is hard to see how any attempt to block maritime traffic in the region would not have the exact opposite effect.
Closing the Strait of Hormuz would run the additional risk of alienating Iran’s foreign partners, especially China, which imports significant amounts of Iranian and other Middle East oil.
“China does not want the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf to be disrupted in any way, and China does not want the price of oil to rise,” Ellen Wald, President of Transversal Consulting, told CNBC for a story published yesterday. “So they’re going to bring the full weight of their economic power to bear on Iran.
The revenue from oil and natural gas shipments is vital to Iran itself, and could be me even more so in the aftermath of the current conflict. Disruptions to seaborne commerce would have other impacts for the regime in Tehran. In recent months, reports had notably said that Iran had been stepping up imports from China of chemicals that can be used to produce fuel for its missiles. The Iranian armed forces also import other kinds of military hardware from China, as well as Russia.
A tanker carrying oil from the United Arab Emirates is moved into position to offload at a terminal in Qingdao, China. YU FANGPING/ Feature China/Future Publishing via Getty Images Feature China
“Their friends will suffer more than their enemies … So it’s very hard to see that happening,” Anas Alhajji, a managing partner at Energy Outlook Advisors, also told CBNC. “It’s not in their interest to cause problems because they will suffer first.”
Whether or not Iran might become less inured to the risks of touching off new regional and global crises with enemies andallies as Israel’s campaign of strikes continues remains to be seen. The regime in Tehran could feel pressured to take drastic measures, in general, if it perceives its existence as being at risk.
If the order were to be given in Tehran, mining and other measures could be implemented quickly, at least to a degree to which they could be highly disruptive, even if U.S. and other forces react with similar speed. Even if the Strait is not fully shut down, impacts would be felt. US or other foreign forces would face challenges restoring confidence that the passage is safe, especially with the effort that would be required to hunt down mobile missile launchers ashore. Any operations in response to Iranian movements at sea or on land would be conducted in a hostile air and maritime environment, including the anti-ship missile super engagement zone described earlier, and which would extend beyond the immediate confines of the Strait. Supporting tasks like the suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses and intelligence-gathering would be critical. In turn, a major force package would have to be put together and immense resources expended.
“The response from Iran, its proxies and allies is unknown and any effect on the maritime environment is not predictable,” the UKMTO JMIC cautioned in its advisory notice yesterday. “Given the proximity of regional flashpoints to major maritime routes and chokepoints, the potential for rapid escalation involving the maritime environment should not be discounted. The threat from the Houthis, who have publicly stated their intent to respond if the U.S. is perceived to be involved, increases the threat of a broader regional impact.”
Altogether, there are significant questions about Iran’s capacity to blockade the Strait of Hormuz and its overall willingness to do so, but it remains a worrisome potentiality that would send out ripples globally.
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