{"id":14416,"date":"2026-03-11T14:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T14:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/14416\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T14:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T14:15:11","slug":"iran-war-has-blocked-the-strait-of-hormuz-a-vital-oil-chokepoint-reopening-it-is-a-big-challenge-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/14416\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran war has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil chokepoint. Reopening it is a big challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PARIS (AP) \u2014 The rising prices<\/a> causing winces of pain at gasoline pumps<\/a> are due, in large part, to the impact of the Iran war<\/a> on the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, a crucial passageway for oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. The narrow waterway off Iran’s coast, now effectively closed by the war, is so vital for the global economy that governments are working on blueprints to speedily reopen it to shipping when the shooting stops.<\/p>\n

In Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a> is leading an international effort to unblock the energy chokepoint, so oil, gas and goods could flow freely again \u201cwhen circumstances permit.” He envisages countries using warships to escort tankers and container vessels through the strait when fighting is no longer raging so intensely, whenever that may be.<\/p>\n

Former naval officers who have served in the Hormuz passage and are intimately acquainted with its waters say vessels would be sitting ducks, with little room for maneuver in the strait’s narrow shipping lanes, if foreign naval forces attempted to reopen the waterway before a cessation of hostilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn today\u2019s context, sending warships or civilian vessels into the Strait of Hormuz would be suicidal,\u201d French navy retired Vice Adm. Pascal Ausseur said in an interview with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

A ceasefire agreement with Iran \u201cwould make the situation shift from suicidal to dangerous. At that point, military ships could be deployed. And then escort operations could begin,” he said.<\/p>\n

Here’s a look at how Hormuz might be made navigable again:<\/p>\n

Battle-hardened in the Red Sea<\/p>\n

French, American, British and other naval crews already have valuable first-hand experience of fighting off missiles and drones in the region. They have escorted and defended cargo vessels through attacks in the Red Sea carried out by Iran-backed Houthi rebels<\/a> in Yemen.<\/p>\n

French frigates used machine guns, cannons and sophisticated air-defense missiles to fend off Houthi strikes. French frigate Alsace downed three ballistic missiles in the Red Sea in 2024 as it was escorting a container ship. The ship’s commander at the time, Capt. J\u00e9r\u00f4me Henry, told the AP that being on the receiving end of the potentially deadly strikes was unnerving and exhausting. The sea battles also took a toll<\/a> on U.S. Navy ships and personnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were repeated attacks, either by drones or missiles,\u201d Henry said in an interview. \u201cThe crew didn\u2019t get much sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

French retired Vice Adm. Michel Olhagaray, a former head of France\u2019s center for higher military studies, says that \u201call navies learned a great deal\u201d about working together and escorting ships from their Red Sea missions and have also drawn on Ukraine’s experiences against Russian barrages<\/a> of missiles and drones during Moscow’s war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Story Continues <\/p>\n

\u201cIt would allow us to deploy to that region with fairly refined know-how and a high level of cooperation \u2014 and that is extremely important,\u201d said Olhagaray, who commanded a French frigate that patrolled the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Higher risks<\/p>\n

Iran is militarily far better equipped than its Houthi proxies in Yemen, which wrought considerable damage and disruption<\/a> in the Red Sea. Armed by Iran, the rebels targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two and killing four sailors<\/a>, between November 2023 and January 2025 and greatly reduced trade flows.<\/p>\n

Iran can reach all of the Strait of Hormuz and its approaches with anti-ship cruise missiles that it developed off Chinese-made weapons, according to mapping by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. It can also target vessels with longer-range missiles, drones, fast attack craft and naval mines, which it used during the Iran-Iraq war. U.S. strikes on mine-laying Iranian vessels<\/a> in this latest conflict underscore the gravity of that danger.<\/p>\n

With war raging, the Hormuz passage is \u201cvery, very dangerous\u201d and the risks for shipping are \u201cmuch greater\u201d than in the Red Sea against the Houthis, Olhagaray said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe means to counter this threat must be far more substantial and far more effective,\u201d he said. \u201cBefore the heat can decrease … most of the offensive installations on land in Iran would have to be eliminated. There would need to be constant monitoring, patrols, extremely close surveillance, and a very high level of intelligence to be able to say that it would be possible to allow tankers to transit, even with military escorts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will not happen at all \u2014 not at all \u2014 in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reassuring insurers<\/p>\n

Experts say another challenge will be reassuring shipping insurers and companies that navigating in Hormuz waters is feasible again. Insurance premiums for shipping in the strait have soared to levels that France’s transport minister described as \u201cinsane,” causing \u201ca big problem\u201d for shippers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaritime traffic is a business. That business has to make money. If insurance costs are so high that you can\u2019t make a profit by sailing through a given area, then you don\u2019t sail through that area. Shipowners are not going to operate at a loss,\u201d said Ausseur, now a director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies, a think tank<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Insurance rates for oil tankers that want to transit through Hormuz are many times higher than they were before the war and are approaching levels that have been charged for ships carrying grain from Ukraine during the ongoing war with Russia, said Marcus Baker, global head of marine, cargo and logistics for insurance broker and risk adviser Marsh Risk.<\/p>\n

Potential naval escorts for commercial ships \u201cwould be helpful,\u201d Baker said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been done before in conflicts past, so that\u2019s not something unusual and that will obviously give a degree of confidence to the insurers that the vessels are going to have a greater degree of safety,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Mae Anderson in New York, and Sylvie Corbet in Paris, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

John Leicester, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS (AP) \u2014 The rising prices causing winces of pain at gasoline pumps are due, in large part,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4517,7773,1143,7771,102,7772,34,7720,1364,7722,7770,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-14416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-strait-of-hormuz","8":"tag-cargo-vessels","9":"tag-container-vessels","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-french-frigate","12":"tag-hormuz","13":"tag-houthi-rebels","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-michel-olhagaray","16":"tag-oil-tankers","17":"tag-pascal-ausseur","18":"tag-shipping-lanes","19":"tag-strait-of-hormuz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116210966368540753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}