Iran’s plan to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a death trap for Trump
Friday, 6 March 2026
Tehran has laid a trap for Donald Trump in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes – and the president risks sailing right into it.
On Wednesday, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard claimed “complete control” over the Gulf strait, which carries 20% of the world’s oil and gas shipments, having vowed to “set on fire” any vessels that dare to cross it.
It is a desperate yet shrewd move by a regime which has lost most of its conventional military force, but has plenty of tools left in its arsenal to cause regional chaos and inflict pain on the West.
The threat of Iranian missiles and drones raining down on commercial ships has led to the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with spooked maritime insurers hiking their premiums by as much as 100% or scrapping them entirely.
Oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has plunged by 90% since the attacks on Iran began.
Much like Vladimir Putin’s energy war, which cut Europe’s gas supplies in revenge for its support of Ukraine, closing the Strait of Hormuz is poised to send the cost of petrol and other consumer goods soaring.
In response, Trump has vowed to offer US government insurance packages for commercial ships and to grant them a US naval escort through the strait’s treacherous waters. That is precisely what Tehran is no doubt hoping he will do.
Trump is no doubt feeling emboldened by the sinking of 11 of Iran’s warships in the Gulf of Oman, and the wider US-Israeli bombing campaign that has sought to paralyse Iranian air defences and missile launchers.
But he is at risk of walking into a trap.
‘Catastrophic for image of Trump’
So far, his war with Iran has been waged from the relative safety of distant air bases and the skies. Yet sending ships to escort commercial vessels will place US troops much closer to what remains of Iran’s crude but lethal arsenal.
It would also commit the US to a complex, long-term, expensive logistical operation in Hormuz – which would require American warships to escort as many as 80 tankers through it per day for as long as the war lasts.
“A US escort makes sense to address the risk of attacks on trade ships, and we know Trump has destroyed their naval fleet. But it would make US forces a much closer target for Iran, and much easier to hit with their short-range missiles,” Andreas Böhm, a Middle East expert from Switzerland’s University of St Gallen, told The Telegraph.
“It might be unimaginable that they would sink an American ship but even if they just hit one, and it required rescue, that would be catastrophic for the image of Donald Trump in the American political theatre,” he said.
Just 38km wide at the narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is a sea passage that links the Gulf with the rest of the world.
Bounded by Iran to the north and Oman to the south, it is the only route by which ships – including oil and gas tankers – can travel from the ports of Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the east coast of Saudi Arabia and most of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the wider world’s energy-hungry markets.
Iran’s navy may have been decimated by five days of bombing, but there are other threats lurking in and around the Strait that could be a menace to US naval escorts.
The regime is estimated to have 17 submarines garrisoned at its headquarters in Bandar Abbas, which sits on the northern bend of the Strait of Hormuz. US forces appear to have only disabled one of them so far.
That submarine – a 500-ton Fateh-class vessel with at least four 533mm torpedo tubes – was Iran’s “most operational” subsurface boat, according to US military officials.
Still, are those weaker, surviving submarines capable of making a dent in a US warship as it escorts oil shipments past Bandar Abbas? That is the calculation Trump will no doubt be weighing up today.
Another threat lies in Iranian short-range missile launchers and drones positioned along the southern coastline, or at least what remains of them.
A third potential risk is the pro-Iranian Houthi faction in Yemen, which unleashed utter chaos via drone and rocket attacks on ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza in 2023 and 2024.
Böhm pointed out that the Houthis have already threatened to resume attacks on commercial ships, as well as strikes on Israel.
But, he said: “The Houthis would not be in that theatre [the Strait of Hormuz] and would rather be creating menace in the Red Sea … they are currently the most efficient and most capable of the Iranian proxies in terms of creating threats.”
Iran’s grim goal, Böhm argued, is to play the long game and try to turn Hormuz into a kind of maritime Vietnam: a deathtrap for American troops that erodes public confidence in the war.
“They want to induce in the Americans something like Vietnam, where they are dragged into a theatre they don’t understand, with body bags coming home … That is how they want to shape the public perception in the United States to deter them from trying it again,” he said.
Even if the US feels it could easily deflect all Iranian threats, the operation would be enormously complex, expensive and would last as long as Iran chooses to keep threatening ships – a factor that is beyond Washington’s control.
“They don’t have a lot of choice, but convoying ships is really difficult. It requires a lot of naval assets, and it will tie up the naval assets they have out there. And it is expensive,” said Dan Marks, a Middle East specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a British security think tank.
“There will be questions about the extent to which tankers will be willing to take the deal,” he added, noting similar issues during the Red Sea crisis of 2023-2024.
“In the case of the Red Sea, the UK-US coalition forces were able to prevent attacks from hitting strategic ships but it wasn’t enough to reassure the shipping companies,” he said.
“It comes down to this: will the shipping industry feel confident enough to be in a convoy where one may get hit? The US may be confident, but it only takes one missile to get through, hit a ship and kill someone,” he said.
‘War zone’ designation
There are already movements within the maritime industry to officially declare the area a war zone, allowing seafarers to veto jobs there.
The International Transport Workers’ Federation and shipping lines are expected to endorse the new designation on Thursday at an emergency meeting of the International Bargaining Forum (IBF), which negotiates pay for seafarers on vessels sailing under a flag of convenience.
It is understood that agreement has already been reached between the union and shipping groups from Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan on changing the designation of the strait from a high-risk area to a “warlike operations area”.
The change will require crew members to be paid substantial bonuses if they sail through the strait. Crucially, though, it will also formally permit them to refuse to undertake such a voyage at all.
An insider involved in the meeting told The Telegraph: “This will be a significant obstacle to the restoration of services through the Strait of Hormuz.
“The Indian and Filipino crews of these vessels very often don’t know where they are going when they are posted to a ship. But this new designation will make it much more likely that they will become aware and refuse to sail as it percolates down through social media.
“Nobody from the ship owners’ side is saying that they want to go through the strait either. It’s clear to everyone that the markets reacted and so Trump came up with this plan, but nobody believes that he can guarantee to protect every vessel from missile attacks.
“The only way to do that is to avoid the area completely.”
But it’s not just ship’s crews under threat.
On-shore production and refinery facilities across the Gulf states have also been directly attacked. Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura oil refinery, the largest in the country, has been hit in twice by Iranian drone strikes, forcing a shut down in production.
Qatar has also ceased its LNG production as a result of Iranian attacks.
Why the US is ready to intervene despite risks
Cutting off oil supplies has long been a powerful tool in asymmetric warfare, such as the so-called tanker war which unfolded during the wider Iran-Iraq conflict of 1980-1988.
At that time, both countries were launching hundreds of attacks on merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf.
On the Iraqi side, the goal was to force Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation, in the hope it would provoke a US intervention. The gambit paid off in 1986, with the US coming to the defence of Kuwaiti tankers and forcing open Hormuz.
Tehran may now turn that chapter of history on its head by using its own attacks on Hormuz to lure American troops.
History also provides a guide why Trump is ready to intervene despite the risks.
The world economy was riven by oil shocks in the 1970s, when Arab nations used their choke hold on energy supplies to punish allies of Israel. Oil prices nearly quadrupled, and recessions ensued.
Much has changed in the 50 years since, with the rise of renewable energy and the invention of fracking, which unlocked an oil and gas boom in the US.
But Hormuz remains a vital channel for oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG), carrying around a fifth of the world’s supply.
Oil jumped from around US$70 per barrel last Thursday to US$81 now. And drivers are already feeling the impact.
One of the world’s biggest suppliers is Qatar, which sits on the wrong side of Hormuz.
America’s shale boom has flooded the country with fuel, transforming the world’s largest economy into a net exporter of energy. That helps to shield it from the unfolding crisis.
But even the US is not immune. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate a sustained US$10 rise in the price of a barrel of oil adds close to 0.3 percentage points to inflation in the US, while reducing GDP growth by 0.1 percentage points.
The crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz has been further compounded by the abandonment of moves to restore sailings through the Red Sea – which borders Saudi Arabia and the Suez Canal – amid fears that Houthi rebels allied to Tehran may resume attacks on ships.
Though there has been no official word on resumed attacks, it has been reported that Houthi commanders have ordered the 20-mile-wide Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and Djibouti to be closed.
Maersk, the world’s second-biggest container line with 15pc of the global fleet, this week rerouted sailings to avoid the Red Sea.
It said that the ships – bound for Europe and the US – would once again be diverted around the Cape of Good Hope, adding up to two weeks to journey times.
In light of all this, it is difficult to see how the Trump offer of insuring and escorting ships is going to resolve the crisis anytime soon.
It is a nasty dilemma for the US president, though one entirely of his own making. Inaction risks global trade chaos, which will eat away at support for this war at home and across the West.
But taking action via military escorts risks plunging the US into an even longer and deeper maritime conflict with the Iranian regime, with no obvious end point in sight.
As both options are so unpalatable to a US President famed for his love of quick, short and dramatic military action, one wonders whether the administration even considered Hormuz when it drew up its war strategy.
Either way, it is America’s allies who will be expected to pay the price in oil, gas and perhaps also blood.