LettersStrait of Hormuz is Iran’s trump card
Readers discuss Iran’s best weapon in negotiations, and how the leaders of China and the US can change the course of events in the Middle East
Last week US President Donald Trump reportedly said that oil tanker crews should go through the Strait of Hormuz and “show some guts”, adding that “there’s nothing to be afraid of” as Iran has “no navy, we sunk all their ships”. Is it that simple? Let’s do a risk assessment here.
At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is 21 nautical miles wide, running next to Iran’s coastline. Large oil tankers up to 380m long travel at a sluggish pace of around 15 knots (28 km/hour).
Note that escorting destroyers must slow down to match the tankers’ speed, rendering them unable to make normal evasive manoeuvres. Thus, they become sitting ducks for Iran’s shore-based anti-ship missiles, drones and other weapons.
Iran’s widely deployed Shahed-136 drones, travelling at speeds of around 185 km/hour, can cover the distance from the coastline to the centreline of the strait in about five minutes. The upgraded Shahed-238 cuts the travel time to about two minutes. Also, the small size of the drones makes them difficult to detect during their initial, low-altitude flight phase.
Escort fleets must execute countermeasures – detection, identification, classification, weapon allocation, command issuance and interception execution – all within less than five minutes for each incoming threat; in “swarm attacks” involving multiple threats simultaneously, the defenders could be overwhelmed.