The US is winning the battle for the Strait of Hormuz – here’s how

Strategically, the Iranian blockade was based on the understanding that it was not necessary to damage every ship attempting to pass through the Hormuz Strait – it was enough to damage a small percentage to deter shipping companies, ship crews and insurance companies from using the route. In other words, to effectively close the Hormuz, it was not necessary to control the shipping lanes in the strait; it was enough to disrupt them.

The Iranians did this using five main tools: radars (especially mobile radars), drones, cruise missiles, fast boats, and sea mines.

To hit a ship, which is a moving target, it is first necessary to locate it in real time. In the open sea, this is a very difficult task, but in a strait like the Hormuz, ships are forced into relatively narrow and well-known routes.

The problem for the Iranians was that the US knew the locations of the major radar stations and attacked them relatively easily. In response, the Iranians temporarily used a sophisticated tactic of deploying a large number of relatively cheap and mobile radars, which were installed on trucks. The truck would go out into the field for a short time, scan the sea in the Hormuz using the radar, and locate ships, especially oil tankers. When the radar is on, it emits radio waves that the enemy (the Americans) can detect and attack with ARM (Anti-Radiation Missiles), which are guided by the radar waves and "ride" on them to the target.

Therefore, after an initial scan, the radar truck would quickly retract back into hiding, but at this point, the Iranians would have a good picture of the location of the ships. Even if the oil tanker managed to move a few kilometres before the cruise missile or drone arrived in the area, it could be located by a short search in the area where it was "detected" by the land-based radar.

To this detection layer, the Iranians added observations, electro-optical detection systems (sophisticated cameras with a very high zoom that do not emit radio waves, and are therefore more difficult to detect), and infrared cameras that detect ships based on the heat they emit. The mountainous topography of the Hormuzgan province and the islands in the strait itself – such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa – made it possible to place these cameras and sensors at a relatively high altitude, thus overcoming the curvature of the Earth (in simple terms: to see further).

In addition, although the naval fleet of the Iranian army, which was based on large ships, was destroyed during the war, the Iranians had another fleet of the Revolutionary Guard, which was based on small and fast boats that were difficult to detect. Using these boats, the Iranians harassed ships in the Hormuz and laid sea mines – large metal balls filled with explosives, which can be rolled into the water from a boat and are very difficult to detect.

In response to these tactics, CENTCOM adopted a strategy of "draining the swamp." The working assumption was that the Iranians had a remarkable capacity to deploy radar and complementary sensor systems, but that ultimately there were only a limited number of them. Therefore, the US systematically and persistently carried out hundreds of precise attacks on these targets.

When it seemed that the Americans were “attacking sand dunes” or secondary targets in the Hormuz area to avoid escalation by attacking high-value targets deep within Iran, they were actually conducting a strategic effort by the Fifth Fleet and the Ninth Air Force (the sea and air forces of CENTCOM) to "blind" the Iranians in the Hormuz.

Every time a mobile radar was turned on, even for a short time, and the radiation it emitted was detected by CENTCOM systems, fighter jets would rush in with ARM missiles. At the same time, a thorough visual and intelligence scan of the surface was conducted to locate passive cameras and sensors that did not emit radiation.

Gradually, through a persistent effort that involved hundreds of "small" attacks, the arsenal of sensors used by Iran in the Hormuz area began to dwindle, until it fell below the critical threshold, and the Iranians largely lost the ability to detect ships in the strait and hit them.

Meanwhile, unmanned vessels patrolled the Hormuz shipping lanes, searching for and neutralising sea mines. This took a considerable amount of time – in part because it was necessary to rule out threats made by Iran regarding the mining of certain areas, even if it was not certain that they were actually mined – but eventually, this area was also cleared through painstaking effort, and the Fifth Fleet declared the southern route through Hormuz to be free of mines.

At the same time, convoys of oil tankers and merchant ships, escorted by the Fifth Fleet, began to operate on the southern route, which is close to the Omani coast. The backbone of the American escort force is the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which are equipped with the advanced Aegis radar and guidance system, and a variety of SM interceptor missiles that can effectively counter all types of threats (drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles). In some cases, the American destroyers likely also destroyed fast attack crafts of the Revolutionary Guard that were attempting to attack the merchant ships.

The American convoys operate at night, with their AIS transponders turned off, which not only makes it very difficult for Iranians to locate them, but also caused civilian tracking agencies to "miss" this movement, and to continue providing commentators and media outlets with incomplete and inaccurate information, perpetuating the narrative of "an invincible Iran" in Hormuz.

Above, the convoys are escorted by drones and Apache helicopters equipped with 70mm Hydra rockets that have been fitted with the APKWS laser guidance system, which turns these "dumb" rockets into a cheap and effective weapon for hunting drones.

At the same time, a diplomatic and commercial effort was underway with shipping companies. The US government provided financial guarantees to ships that agreed to join the convoys, effectively covering the increased insurance costs resulting from the Iranian attacks. Countless conversations were held behind the scenes with company executives, and even with the captains and crews of the ships. Initially, the response was limited, but as success grew and it became clear that the Iranians were having increasing difficulty in hitting the ships, the number of participants increased.

Currently, the Americans are successfully transporting more than eight million barrels of oil per day through Hormuz. In addition, there are approximately 1.5 million barrels that flow through the oil pipeline connecting Abu Dhabi and Fujairah, which bypasses Hormuz; a certain amount of barrels that Saudi Arabia exports through the Red Sea from the Yanbu port, although this amount has decreased significantly from a peak of approximately 4.5 million barrels per day to an unknown number, following the resumption of attacks by the Houthis in Bab al-Mandab; and several hundred thousand barrels per day that are exported from the Gulf region via fuel tankers.

In total, this amounts to an estimated 10 to 13 million barrels per day on average – still less than the approximately 21 million that passed through Hormuz before the war. However, this must be added to significant developments in the global oil market – first and foremost, a decrease in oil consumption by China, which took advantage of the crisis to accelerate its process of weaning itself off oil; a slow but steady increase in oil production in Venezuela and the United States (this is a different type of oil than that produced in the Gulf, but it still affects the global market); and likely, the laundering of Russian oil, despite the sanctions imposed on Russia following the war in Ukraine.

All of these factors together offset most of the effect of Hormuz, and therefore, despite the increase in oil prices, they have been hovering around $85-95 per barrel for some time – far from the predictions of $150 and higher, and of a "global crisis on the scale of the Great Depression".

In conclusion, from the outset, the assumption that the United States would not be able to overcome the Iranian maritime blockade in Hormuz, and that the global energy market, which has experienced major disruptions in the past and overcome them (such as during the oil crisis of the 1970s), would not be able to adapt to the new situation this time, was not well-founded.

It was based on Iranian propaganda that sought (and succeeded) to create a myth around Hormuz, on Western media outlets that readily adopted this agenda because it aligned with their own, and on independent commentators who relied with absolute certainty on incomplete and inaccurate information, and who gradually became attached to their own preconceived notions.

The war against Iran has not yet been decided – that will only happen when the ayatollah regime falls; but the battle for Hormuz, it seems, is closer than ever to being decided – and this is a very important milestone on the path to victory in the entire campaign.

Tamir Morag is the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s TV channel and news site Channel 14