By Jared Malsin, Summer Said and Shelby Holliday

Escalating Iranian attacks and the U.S. government's decision to hold off on military escorts for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz are raising the prospect of a prolonged closure that would choke off exports through the world's most important energy-transport route.

On Wednesday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck three cargo ships attempting to transit the waterway, the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf. It warned that any other vessels trying to move through the strait also would be targeted.

Later on Wednesday night, in an incident far from the strait, two foreign tankers carrying Iraqi fuel oil were ablaze in Iraqi waters after being hit by projectiles, Iraqi ports officials said.

The U.S. has turned down repeated requests for tanker escorts from oil companies, said officials from Gulf countries. Defense officials say it is too risky to send warships into the confined waters of the strait -- which is about 21 miles wide at its narrowest point -- until the risks of Iranian fire have receded.

American forces have hit Iran's navy, and its drone and missile crews, in an effort to curb the threat. But Iran is still landing blows. Added to that are the risks of naval mines and Iranian submarines lurking below.

With traffic paralyzed as a result, the shutdown of the strait is fast causing a global economic disruption and a major military and political challenge for the Trump administration.

Shippers were bracing for an extended shutdown of the waterway, where traffic could take a long time to recover even after the conflict ends.

"It will take time. Not only do we need hostilities to stop, but also shipowners to perceive that the risk to the people on board and to the ships has been materially reduced," said Jerry Kalogiratos, chief executive of Athens-based Capital Clean Energy Carriers, which transports liquefied natural gas. "Think about the Red Sea: Six months after the Houthis stopped the attacks, and traffic has not normalized," he said, referring to Yemen's Iran-backed militants. "It's all about perception of safety. And we are far away from that."

The hit to supplies briefly pushed the price of oil up over $100 a barrel and has raised the cost of gasoline for consumers. It is also squeezing Gulf producers who still depend heavily on oil revenue and forcing difficult decisions to shut down oil fields as crude piles up with nowhere to go.

The chief executive of the Saudi state oil company Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, warned Tuesday that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would cause "catastrophic consequences for the world's oil markets" and seriously disrupt the global economy.

That is what Tehran is counting on, as it struggles to respond militarily to the U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign now in its second week. "9 days into Operation Epic Mistake, oil prices have doubled while all commodities are skyrocketing," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a social-media post Monday.

The Revolutionary Guard's intelligence branch sent a mass message to the country's cellphone users, saying its control of the Strait of Hormuz has given Iran the ability to move the global economy.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain have cut output by nearly seven million barrels of oil a day, people familiar with the matter said.

The strait handled 38% of the world's seaborne crude-oil trade in the week before the war began, according to a United Nations trade agency. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. are working to ramp up exports through alternative pipeline routes that bypass the strait. In the Saudi case, it means redirecting crude away from its refineries, tightening the market for refined fuel in the process.

The resulting upward move in prices is becoming a significant challenge for the Trump administration, which is facing rising domestic concern about fuel prices and inflation.

Under pressure to get the oil moving, President Trump has suggested that the U.S. and its allies would provide warships to escort vessels safely through the waterway.

At a campaign event on Tuesday Trump said, "When the time comes, the U.S. Navy and its partners will escort tankers through the strait if needed. I hope it's not gonna be needed." On Wednesday, Trump said ships should use the strait.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said the president "is fully prepared to provide U.S. Navy escorts through the Strait of Hormuz if he deems it necessary."

Navy officials, however, said they have haven't been told to provide escorts and said that doing so currently would pose enormous risks to U.S. warships and commercial vessels. One official said the Strait of Hormuz could become an Iranian "kill box" if ships start trying to pass through.

Iran lies along the strait's eastern shore and can threaten ships with its arsenal of aerial and naval drones, antiship cruise missiles and mines. The antiship missiles are mounted on mobile launchers and can be fired from such a close distance that defensive systems don't always detect them until it is too late, an official said.

In the decades since the so-called Tanker War with Iran in the 1980s -- when the U.S. escorted tankers in and out of the Persian Gulf -- Iran has upgraded its arsenal of fast-attack boats and unmanned air and water craft that Iran can use to attack tankers remotely.

The U.S. military says it has struck more than 60 Iranian navy ships during the current conflict, but military analysts say Iran retains some of its "mosquito fleet" of small manned and unmanned vessels.

An escort operation on the strait would be far more challenging than the most recent operation of its kind, when the U.S. and allies helped protect ships in the Red Sea from the Houthi militants in Yemen.

That rebel group put heavy pressure on U.S. forces and aircraft carriers, contributing to a number of accidents, including one where a U.S. destroyer shot down an American jet.

In addition to being difficult and dangerous, military escorts in the Persian Gulf would only allow a trickle of ships through at any one time, said military and shipping-industry analysts.

Because the strait is so narrow, U.S. or other military personnel would have little time to respond to incoming fire, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former Pentagon official who served in several positions overseeing the U.S. Navy.

Each tanker might need to be escorted by two warships to cover the risk of incoming threats from Iran's coast and small islands nearby.

"You're going to get seconds before these drones are going to be right on top of you, because you're so close to the shoreline," he said. "That drives up the number of ships you need."

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday the military would set up the forces to carry out escorts if given the task.

Former U.S. military officials said the U.S. has the capacity to escort oil tankers, but it would likely require diverting ships involved in offensive attacks on Iran. U.S. guided-missile destroyers, the workhorse of the Navy, are also essential to the region's missile defenses.

"This is a problem of capacity and of having a number of ships, American ships, inside the Gulf and able to do that," said retired Adm. James Foggo, the dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy. "These guys are really busy."

Military and shipping-industry analysts said only a halt to the fighting would allow the full resumption of traffic in the strait, through which more than 100 ships passed each day prior to the war. Even if the U.S. were to launch military escorts, some shipping firms and oil companies are likely to hesitate to send their vessels through the strait because of the continued risk of Iranian attack.

"Some of them are saying, if there are still attacks and a live war going on, they're not going to risk it either way," said Bridget Diakun, a senior risk and compliance analyst at Lloyd's List Intelligence in London.

Even if the strait were to reopen, the U.S. and its partners would face the challenge of clearing a backlog of more than 600 international trading ships that are stuck in the Persian Gulf waiting to get out among the total of more than 1,000 ships in the waterway, according to Lloyd's List Intelligence.

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 11, 2026 22:45 ET (02:45 GMT)

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