U.S. President Donald Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., March 23, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump wants Americans to believe blockading access to Iranian ports will compel Iran’s government to admit defeat in the ongoing war, but experts see a flaw he will not acknowledge.
“A former [President Joe] Biden-era Pentagon official said the U.S. is trying to turn the tables on Iran, which has blockaded the strait for weeks during the U.S.-Israeli war with the country, creating a bottleneck that roiled global markets and strained the economy,” reported CNBC’s Garrett Downs on Monday. Even though the blockade is intended to compel Iran’s leaders to back down and acquiesce to U.S. demands to restore freedom of navigation to the Strait of Hormuz (which was open before Trump attacked Iran), it is not likely to accomplish that.
“The administration seems to be pursuing what is called a close blockade, which is an attempt to prevent ships from going into those ports or leaving those ports,” Michael Horowitz, senior fellow for technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense, told Downs. “The theory behind a close blockade of Iran’s ports is to make it impossible for Iran to financially benefit from oil sales via shipping in the strait while it is restricting others from doing so.”
Retired Marine colonel Mark Cancian, who is now a senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Defense and Security Department, said the United States will likely employ a strategy similar to that which it used against Venezuela earlier this year.
“We’ll know a lot more when the first boarding takes place, because that will tell us where they’re boarding ships, how they’re doing it and what happens to the ship after they board,” Cancian told Downs. Yet because the U.S. cannot afford to indefinitely wait for gas prices to go down while Iran continues to close the Strait of Hormuz, Trump may still need to resort to more direct military action if his blockade fails.
“To effectively end the conflict, the U.S. needs to both communicate to Iran the conditions in which it would stop fighting, and the U.S. and Iran probably need to have at least some understanding of the conditions in which the U.S. might start a conflict with Iran again,” Horowitz told Downs. “Because if Iran believes that no matter what they do the U.S. is going to go after them, then the incentive for their leaders will be to keep fighting and keep threatening the strait.”
“This makes it a really challenging negotiation,” he concluded.
Cancian said that, in addition to blockading Iran, Trump could either reopen the strait by eliminating Iran’s stranglehold on it or accelerating the bombing campaign by targeting civilian infrastructure.
“Other than that, I’m not sure what leverage he has,” Cancian told Downs.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told AlterNet last week, in response to other criticisms of Trump’s Iran war policies, that “the United States’ energy dominance status, as the world’s leading producer and a top exporter of oil and natural gas, has positioned us to not rely on the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz like other countries. If anything, Operation Epic Fury actually underscored the importance of producing reliable, affordable, and secure energy here at home. Many of our allies that have tried transitioning to intermittent and unreliable renewable energy sources have predictably failed to break their reliance on foreign oil that goes through the Strait."
She concluded, "Several countries from around the world are now looking to emulate the President’s energy dominance agenda and are advancing new partnerships that enhance their energy security with the United States.”
Similar to Rogers White House spokesperson Kush Desai told AlterNet that “President Trump has been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and the Administration went into this military engagement with a plan to mitigate these disruptions to America’s long-term economic resurgence.”
He added, "As energy markets begin to stabilize, historic tax refund checks hit the mail, and the rest of the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda continues taking effect, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”