From Hormuz to the Red Sea: How Iran Is Turning the War Into a Battle for Strategic Leverage
The renewed U.S.-Iran war is not simply an exchange of bombings, but a broader contest over energy routes, regional military access, economic endurance, and the terms under which the two sides may eventually return to negotiations. Iran’s principal leverage remains its ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, while the United States is attempting to destroy that leverage through a sustained campaign against Iran’s military capabilities and the nation’s infrastructure. So far, Washington has inflicted extensive damage inside Iran but has not restored normal navigation through the strait or achieved other goals associated with the war.
The scale of the maritime disruption is striking. Ship-tracking data showed that only three vessels per day passed through the Strait of Hormuz between July 22 and July 24, a tiny fraction of the normal volume through the world’s most important oil and gas corridor. Although this does not amount to complete physical closure, it gives Iran what can reasonably be described as effective coercive control over the waterway: Tehran does not need to stop every vessel if the threat of missiles, drones, mines, seizures, and rising insurance costs persuades most shipowners to abstain from transit.
Iran does not legally control the Strait of Hormuz, nor has it established an uncontested naval occupation of the channel. Yet it has demonstrated the capacity to determine, through the selective application of force and risk, whether the strait functions as an ordinary commercial route or not. The United States resumed its blockade of Iran-related shipping in part to weaken Tehran’s economy and break this position. Instead, renewed fighting has again largely halted commercial traffic and with new disruptions to traffic in the Red Sea, physical crude prices have risen sharply and some grades have approached $110 per barrel. Brent crude surpassed $105 on July 24 as traders struggled to replace disrupted Middle Eastern supplies.
Iran has simultaneously sought to transform pressure on its own exports into a wider counter-blockade against the Gulf states supporting the American campaign. Bahrain and Kuwait have borne much of the retaliation as both have provided important military facilities, logistics, air defenses and staging capacity to the United States. Iran has targeted American-linked military sites in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, while Kuwait has also reported damage to power-generation facilities connected to freshwater production.
This is not simply retaliation for individual U.S. strikes. The pattern suggests that Tehran is trying to increase the cost of hosting American forces and supporting operations against Iran. Bases, radar sites, air-defense systems, logistics centers, fuel facilities, troop accommodations, communications infrastructure, and dual-use installations across the region are being placed under continuing pressure. Iran appears to be trying to reduce the geographic freedom from which Washington can conduct the war.
After concentrating much of its earlier retaliation on Bahrain and Kuwait, Iran has increasingly focused on American positions in Jordan. The shift is strategically significant. Jordan provides the United States with access to an area connecting the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Syria and Israel. Sustained attacks there have resulted in casualties and appear to be aimed at dispersing America’s regional presence, forcing it to consolidate personnel and materiel in fewer and more heavily defended locations - like Israel - or those further from Iran.
Iran has not driven the United States out of the region, but it may have achieved partial success in limiting the operational flexibility that America’s regional basing network was designed to provide. Every threatened base has either been largely abandoned or now requires additional interceptors, protection systems, medical support, personnel dispersal, hardened shelters and contingency planning. Even unsuccessful attacks impose costs by compelling the United States to expend expensive defensive missiles and divert assets from offensive operations.
This pressure also changes how the effectiveness of Iranian missile and drone attacks should be assessed. The debate is no longer whether Iranian weapons are reaching important areas, but how much military and economic damage they are causing. Iranian claims regarding individual aircraft, intelligence sites, radar systems, and command facilities still require careful verification, but the broader effectiveness of the campaign can no longer be dismissed simply as an unverified Iranian narrative.
American acknowledgments of casualties, damage, rising operational costs, and the need for additional personnel demonstrate that the strikes are producing consequences. Reports that U.S. officials are considering whether outside assistance - including possible Russian and Chinese intelligence, targeting support, or technology - may have contributed to Iran’s improving performance further illustrate how unexpected some of the attacks have appeared in Washington.
What can be said with greater confidence is that Iran’s missiles and drones appear to be imposing more serious costs than many U.S. planners expected, and perhaps operating more effectively than during the earlier phase of the conflict. Iran may be combining lessons from previous exchanges, improved targeting, new tactics, dispersed launch systems, and a greater willingness to strike the logistical architecture behind American operations rather than focusing only on heavily-defended flagship bases.
The United States, for its part, has responded with an increasingly sustained campaign inside Iran. By July 23, the U.S. military had completed twelve consecutive nights of strikes against command centers, missile and drone storage facilities, coastal surveillance positions, maritime capabilities, air defenses and launch sites. Washington has also attacked or threatened infrastructure whose military and civilian functions overlap, including bridges, energy systems, coastal installations, and facilities connected to Iran’s ability to sustain operations around Hormuz.
The attacks on bridges illustrate both the power and limitations of this approach. Destroying transportation links can slow military movement, disrupt supply chains, increase domestic costs and signal that the United States is prepared to widen its target list. But many Iranian bridges cross seasonal or dry riverbeds and can be bypassed through temporary roads, engineering work, or alternative routes. Unless conducted as part of a sustained campaign against transportation, electricity, fuel, communications, and repair capacity, isolated bridge attacks are unlikely to paralyze Iran.
Strikes targeting infrastructure that is primarily used by civilians are also war crimes. Those that impact reservoirs, water networks, desalination facilities or electricity plants are particularly consequential. They can impose immediate pressure on civilians and create significant humanitarian costs, particularly in southern Iran. Yet such attacks may not produce the political result Washington seeks. Infrastructure destruction can weaken state capacity while simultaneously strengthening nationalist sentiment and making compromise appear equivalent to capitulation. Economic pain does not automatically translate into political surrender.
Meanwhile, the Houthis have announced a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia and attacked Saudi-linked oil tankers, making both the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb unsafe simultaneously for certain ships. The southern Red Sea is particularly important because Saudi Arabia has relied on its east-west pipeline and Red Sea ports to bypass disruptions in the Persian Gulf. If both chokepoints are threatened, one of the principal alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz becomes far less reliable.
The economic effects are already visible. War-risk insurance premiums for some southern Red Sea routes have increased from roughly 0.3 percent to more than 1 percent of a vessel’s value, with some quotations reaching 3 percent. Some tankers have rerouted through the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope, adding approximately one month to voyages and millions of dollars in additional operating costs.
This two-chokepoint strategy creates a difficult problem for Washington. Military superiority alone cannot reopen maritime trade. The United States must also convince insurers, tanker operators, crews, exporters and importers that shipping will remain safe after the next missile launch, drone attack, mine incident, or tanker seizure. Destroying launch sites does not automatically restore commercial confidence, particularly when Iran can disperse its weapons and the Houthis can generate an independent threat environment.
That helps explain the growing debate over broader American escalation. President Donald Trump has threatened to expand the target list to include energy facilities and additional bridges, seize Kharg Island and strike the deeply buried nuclear-related facility known as Pickaxe Mountain (Kuh-e Kolang). The movement of additional troops, aircraft, medical personnel and logistical units may therefore represent preparations for a longer air campaign, enhanced force protection, mounting casualties, or even a limited ground operation.
The reduction of diplomatic personnel by Britain and several European governments similarly reflects expectations that the conflict could intensify. Possible scenarios include special operations, an attempt to seize and hold an island or coastal position or operations targeting infrastructure connected to Hormuz. Any attack on Kuh-e Kolang would carry considerable uncertainty. A deeply-buried facility may require repeated use of specialized munitions, and even extensive physical destruction would not eliminate Iran’s scientific expertise, dispersed equipment or long-term rebuilding capacity. Several analysts have argued that such an attack could strengthen the argument inside Iran for eventually acquiring a nuclear deterrent rather than eliminating that possibility.
Iranian figures, including Mehdi Mohammadi, have explicitly advanced this argument: that attacks intended to eliminate the nuclear program could instead accelerate a political decision to reconstruct it under more secretive and militarized conditions. Whether Iran currently intends to build a nuclear weapon remains uncertain, but the strategic risk is clear: destroying physical infrastructure could strengthen the internal case for pursuing a future deterrent.
The United States therefore faces a difficult strategic choice. Its campaign has damaged Iran’s military, naval, energy and nuclear infrastructure, but it has not removed Iran’s leverage over Hormuz, halted attacks on regional bases or prevented the conflict from expanding into the Red Sea. A significantly larger campaign might reduce Iran’s retaliatory capacity, but it also may fail to do so while exacerbating the global energy crisis, increasing American casualties, exposing Gulf partners to greater retaliation and making disengagement even more difficult.
Iran faces difficult calculations as well. Its chokepoint strategy has demonstrated that the United States cannot wage war without imposing substantial military and economic costs on the region and global markets. Yet prolonged disruption also damages Iran’s own economy, threatens export revenues, consumes military inventories and increases the risk of devastating attacks on critical infrastructure and civilian population centers.
Ultimately, Iran wants to demonstrate that it cannot be bombed, blockaded, or stripped of its missile and nuclear capabilities without imposing unacceptable costs. The United States, in the thick of a war in which it did not expect extensive pushback, appears to be searching for an endstate that it can more reasonably claim as a win. Yet many of the goals it has pursued are extraordinarily difficult to achieve by military means alone.
Washington’s immediate objective has been to deprive Tehran of its Strait of Hormuz leverage. It has not yet achieved that goal. Commercial shipping remains severely restricted, energy prices continue to rise and insecurity has spread beyond the Persian Gulf into the Red Sea. Iran, meanwhile, has preserved much of its retaliatory capability and increased pressure on the American regional military network, though at considerable cost and while remaining vulnerable to a much larger American campaign.
President Trump appears to have concluded that only a dramatically expanded offensive can alter this balance. Such an escalation could include broader attacks on Iran’s electricity, transportation, water, energy, and communications infrastructure, renewed strikes against deeply buried nuclear facilities or attempts to seize strategically important territory such as Kharg Island. The United States would be betting that overwhelming pressure can compel Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and agree to other far-reaching American terms.
The alternative is that both governments conclude the risks of further escalation now outweigh the benefits. Each side may believe it has accumulated sufficient leverage to return to negotiations without appearing to surrender: Iran through its continued influence over Hormuz, the Red Sea, and regional bases; and the United States through the damage it has inflicted and the credible threat of much broader escalation. Whether the next phase is diplomacy or a far more destructive war will depend on which side believes time is improving its bargaining position, and whether either side fatally miscalculates the other’s willingness to escalate.