ANALYSIS: The Strait of Hormuz, Held Hostage by a War That No One Knows How to End

Ottawa: Between Atlantic Solidarity and Naval Reality

Canada was present at the virtual meeting. That is a fact. But behind that fact lies a question that no one in Ottawa wants to ask publicly: with what resources? The Royal Canadian Navy has an aging fleet. The Halifax-class frigates, commissioned in the 1990s, were not designed for mine-clearing operations in one of the most dangerous maritime passages on the planet.

Canada says yes at the negotiating table. The real question is whether it will say yes when the time comes to send ships into waters where Iran has vowed to sink anything that moves.

Minister Anand discussed Canada’s potential contributions with Saudi officials. The term “contributions” is deliberately vague. Intelligence? Logistics? A symbolic naval presence? No one is specifying, because specifying would mean committing—and committing would mean explaining to Canadians why their sailors are risking their lives to reopen a strait closed by strikes in which Canada did not participate.

The Trap of the Coalition of the Willing

The United Kingdom and France are leading the way. European diplomats acknowledge that the coalition is still in its infancy. Next week, military planners will meet to discuss options—mine clearance, a reassurance force for commercial shipping, and intelligence sharing. But every country that joins this coalition sends a signal to Tehran: we are ready to confront you.

And Tehran is listening. The Revolutionary Guards did not mine the strait by accident. They did so with strategic precision—knowing that every day the strait is closed drives up oil prices, weakens Western economies, and strengthens Iran’s negotiating position. Joining the coalition means accepting a showdown with an adversary that has nothing to lose.

The Bottleneck That No One Knew About

The Strait of Hormuz is 39 kilometers wide at its narrowest point. Thirty-nine kilometers separating Iran from Oman. Thirty-nine kilometers through which between 20 and 21 million barrels of crude oil pass every day—one-fifth of global consumption. Liquefied natural gas, too, in colossal quantities. The oil tankers that travel through this passage supply refineries in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

For decades, military strategists have warned: Hormuz is the world economy’s greatest vulnerability. Reports piled up in the drawers of defense ministries. Simulations ran in the Pentagon’s war rooms. Everyone knew. No one diversified supply routes sufficiently.

And now, forty countries are discovering in real time what it means to depend on a thirty-nine-kilometer corridor controlled by a regime they have just bombed.

Insurance Premiums as a Weapon of Economic Destruction

Even if the mines were cleared tomorrow, the strait would not reopen immediately. Because modern warfare is not won with explosives alone—it is won with insurance premiums. Marine insurers have classified the Strait of Hormuz as a war-risk zone. Premiums have increased tenfold, twentyfold, sometimes fiftyfold. No shipowner will send an oil tanker loaded to the brim through an area where insurance costs more than the cargo.

This was precisely the topic that dominated Thursday’s closed-door discussions. How can we restore confidence among shipowners? How can we lower premiums? The military response—naval presence, escorts—is only part of the equation. Security guarantees are also needed. And these guarantees, according to French Armed Forces spokesperson Guillaume Vernet, would ultimately require coordination with Iran itself.

Coordinating with a country we’re bombing. The contradiction is obvious to everyone.

French Realism Versus American Fantasy

Speaking from Seoul, President Emmanuel Macron directly contradicted Trump. Seizing the strait militarily? “Unrealistic,” he declared. And he explained why: it would take an indefinite amount of time and would expose all forces involved to coastal fire from the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian ballistic missiles.

Macron isn’t saying this out of pacifism—he’s saying it based on military logic. France has a naval base in Abu Dhabi, a few hundred kilometers from the strait. Its officers know the terrain. They know that the Iranian coastline overlooks the passage, that anti-ship missile batteries are buried in mountain bunkers, and that the Pasdaran’s fast attack craft can overwhelm a naval convoy’s defenses in a matter of minutes.

Trump says, “Take it.” Macron replies, “With how many coffins?”—and that is the only question that matters.

Europe Forced to Grow Up

And yet, Europe is taking action. This may be the most unexpected consequence of this crisis. European countries that initially refused to send their navies to the region—for fear of being drawn into the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict—are changing their calculations. Not because they want war, but because energy prices are devouring their economies.

The price of oil per barrel has surpassed thresholds that European economic models cannot absorb. Inflation is rising again. Industries that depend on imported gas—chemicals, metallurgy, glass—are slowing down or shutting down. The cost of inaction now exceeds the cost of military risk. It was this shift that filled Thursday’s virtual conference room.

Tehran Is Playing for Time

Iran is under bombardment. Its infrastructure is being destroyed. Its bridges are collapsing. Its military bases lie in ruins. And yet, amid this chaos, Tehran holds the trump card—physical control of the Strait of Hormuz. Every day the strait remains closed is a strategic victory for Iran. Every rise in oil prices is a reverse sanction—imposed not on Tehran, but on the entire world.

Iran’s logic is brutally simple: you strike us, everyone pays. The mines laid in the strait target not only ships—they target the wallets of European consumers, the budgets of Asian governments, and the stability of global markets.

The Revolutionary Guards and the Doctrine of Access Denial

For decades, the Pasdaran have perfected what military strategists call the A2/AD doctrine—Anti-Access/Area Denial. Thousands of sea mines. Hundreds of missile-armed fast patrol boats. Coastal batteries camouflaged in the Zagros Mountains. Surveillance and attack drones. Miniature submarines virtually undetectable in the shallow waters of the strait.

You can bomb Iran from the air. But to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, you have to go to the surface—and on the surface, the Revolutionary Guards have been waiting for forty years.

And yet, no one in Western capitals seems to have anticipated this obvious fact. The U.S.-Israeli strike plan called for the destruction of Iran’s nuclear sites. It apparently did not include a credible response to the inevitable closure of the strait. It’s like planning a burglary without anticipating the guard dog’s reaction.

Washington Is Looking the Other Way

The United States was not at Thursday’s meeting. This was no oversight—it was a message. Trump has decided that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not an American problem. The United States, the world’s leading oil producer thanks to shale, is less dependent on the strait than Europe or Asia. What passes through Hormuz mainly fuels refineries in Yokohama, Rotterdam, and Mumbai—not those in Texas.

The geopolitics of energy have changed. And Trump is exploiting this shift with unapologetic transactional ruthlessness: if it’s not our oil that’s being blocked, it’s not our war. Let those who depend on it pay—in money, in ships, in lives if necessary.

China, India, and the Silent Calculation

India was present at the meeting. China—the leading importer of Iranian oil—was not. This Chinese silence is deafening. Beijing imports massive quantities of crude through the Strait of Hormuz but has chosen not to join a Western coalition to reopen it. The reason is strategic: China negotiates directly with Tehran through bilateral channels, far removed from multilateral meetings.

And yet, if China does not participate in the solution, no collective pressure on Iran will work. Tehran can resist forty countries if its top oil customer continues to do business through other channels. The Iran-China pipeline does not pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The “ghost” oil tankers that circumvent sanctions do not need this strait.

From the Virtual to the Real: The Most Dangerous Transition

The next announced step is a meeting of military planners. No more diplomats—make way for admirals, mine warfare experts, and maritime intelligence specialists. The topics on the table will be concrete: How many minesweepers? What aerial surveillance capabilities? What escort arrangements for commercial convoys? How will intelligence be shared among allies?

The spokesperson for the French armed forces set the stage: it will be necessary to assemble a sufficient number of ships, air and maritime coordination capabilities, and an intelligence-sharing capability. In military terms, this means a large-scale interallied operation—the kind that takes weeks to plan and months to deploy.

And while planners are planning, every day that passes costs the global economy billions—and strengthens Tehran’s negotiating position.

The Impossible Condition—Coordinating with the Enemy

Vernet added a point that many have chosen to ignore: ultimately, coordination with Iran will be necessary to ensure the safety of ships. This innocuous statement contains an existential contradiction. How can one coordinate with a country that your allies are bombing on a daily basis? How can one obtain security guarantees from a regime whose infrastructure is being systematically destroyed?

The answer is simple: you can’t. Not as long as the bombs are falling. Which means that the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is, in effect, contingent on a ceasefire—the very one that no one is seriously negotiating.

European Households as Collateral Damage

When Yvette Cooper talks about households and businesses being hit all over the world, it’s not just a figure of speech. Gas prices have skyrocketed in Europe. Heating, already unaffordable after the Ukraine crisis, is once again becoming a luxury for millions of families. Trucking companies are passing on the cost increase to every product they transport. Food prices are rising because tractors and trucks run on diesel.

Central banks, which had begun to lower interest rates, are caught in a bind. Stimulating the economy with imported energy inflation only fuels the price spiral. Doing nothing means watching a recession take hold. There are no good options—only bad ones and worse ones.

Asia on the Front Lines

Europe is suffering, but Asia is bleeding. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—economies that import nearly all of their energy—are in a state of undeclared energy emergency. Strategic reserves are being tapped. Governments are urgently negotiating alternative supplies via longer, more expensive, and insufficient routes.

And yet, these countries were largely absent from Thursday’s meeting. India was there—but not Japan, not South Korea. As if the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz were a Western problem, when in fact it is a global one.

From “Tanker War” to Today: The Same Nightmare on Repeat

In the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War, the strait had already become a battlefield. Operation Earnest Will—U.S. naval escorts for Kuwaiti oil tankers—had cost lives and ships. The frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine in 1988. Ten sailors were wounded. The ship nearly sank.

Forty years later, mines are more sophisticated. Drones didn’t exist back then. Anti-ship missiles have gained range and accuracy. And the world’s dependence on Gulf oil, despite all the promises of an energy transition, hasn’t decreased by a single barrel.

We are returning to the same breaking point, with the same vulnerabilities, the same actors, and the same mistakes—but with infinitely more dangerous weapons.

The strait that no one has been able to bypass

Saudi Arabia has a pipeline—the East-West Pipeline—capable of diverting part of its production to the Red Sea. The UAE has built an oil pipeline to Fujairah on the Indian Ocean, bypassing Hormuz. But even combined, these alternatives cover only a fraction of the volumes that normally pass through the strait. Geography remains unforgiving: the Persian Gulf has only one exit.

When Freedom of Navigation Becomes a Fiction

International law—the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea—guarantees transit passage through international straits. Article 38 is unambiguous. All ships and aircraft enjoy the right of transit passage, which shall not be impeded. Iran ratified this convention… and then ignored it.

But who will enforce this right? The UN Security Council is paralyzed—Russia and China will block any resolution against Iran. The International Court of Justice can issue advisory opinions, but it cannot send ships. The rules-based order that Westerners invoke in every crisis is, once again, revealing its structural limitations: it exists only as long as someone is willing to defend it by force.

And yet, the power that has been supposed to play this role since 1945—the United States—has just walked away from the table.

The precedent everyone fears

If Iran succeeds in imposing conditions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz—transit fees, restrictions, a strategic toll—the precedent will be devastating. Tomorrow, Turkey could invoke the same right over the Bosphorus. Egypt could do the same in the Suez Canal—which it is already doing to some extent. China could do the same in the South China Sea. Every strait, every canal, every maritime passageway would become a tool for geopolitical blackmail.

Hormuz is not just a strait. It is a test—and for now, the world is failing it.

Oil as an Existential Vulnerability

There is a cruel irony in this crisis. For years, environmental activists have been repeating that dependence on fossil fuels is a strategic risk. They were ignored, mocked, and called naive. Today, forty countries gathered for an emergency meeting are discovering that a single 39-kilometer corridor can paralyze the global economy.

Solar power doesn’t pass through Hormuz. Wind power doesn’t pass through Hormuz. Nuclear power doesn’t pass through Hormuz. Every megawatt produced locally is a megawatt that no dictator, no undersea mine, and no missile can block.

The lesson no one will learn

But this lesson will not be learned. Because once the strait reopens—in weeks, months, who knows—prices will fall, the sense of urgency will fade, and the same governments that are panicking today will postpone investments in renewable energy. Until the next crisis. Until the next strait. Until the next round of blackmail.

This is the endless cycle of energy dependence: panic, mobilization, temporary resolution, and then forgetting. Then it starts all over again.

The Unresolved Crisis

Thursday’s meeting resolved nothing. Diplomats acknowledge this in private. What was accomplished was an assessment—who is ready to participate, what options are on the table, what resources could be deployed. An assessment, not a plan. A conversation, not a decision.

Next week, the military will take over. They’ll discuss minehunters, communication frequencies, and rules of engagement. They’ll map out scenarios on nautical charts. They’ll calculate risks.

The verdict no one wants to hear

And in the meantime, the oil tankers will remain at anchor. Prices will continue to climb. Households will continue to pay. Because the truth is simple and brutal: you don’t reopen a mined strait via videoconference. You don’t reassure shipowners with press releases. You don’t neutralize the Revolutionary Guards with consensus.

It will take ships, courage, and probably bloodshed. And for now, the forty countries in the coalition have offered nothing but words.

And yet, these words matter. Because they mark a turning point—the moment when Europe and its allies accept that the United States will not come to their rescue, that the post-Pax Americana world has arrived, and that collective security will never again come for free.

The Strait of Hormuz is not just a maritime passage. It is the mirror in which the world finally sees what it has become: fragile, divided, and terribly dependent on things it cannot control.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost