Trump’s Hormuz Blockade Is a Bold Stroke Undone by a Divided Hand

A ruler who announces, “We are taking over the strait, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it,” is not playing at modesty. The effectual truth is clear: the United States means to reimpose a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, to tax passage at twenty percent, and to proclaim itself “guardian” of a channel that carries a fifth of the world’s oil. This is not policing. It is possession. The memorandum of understanding that promised sixty days of free flow is declared a dead letter after scarcely a month. What was negotiated with ink is now revised with ships. Once cannons speak, memoranda are commentaries.

Iran answers in the only language open to the weaker claimant: missiles and mockery. Its Revolutionary Guard calls the strait its territory, strikes “non-compliant” supertankers, and hits American-linked facilities. The United States replies with hours of air and missile attacks on Iranian defense, drone, and maritime sites “to degrade Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping.” Here we see the old game of reprisals: each side must show it can wound without seeming to yield. In my Discourses on Livy, I praised Rome’s tumults because they were contained within institutions; here the tumults play out with explosives along a contested waterway.

Control of such a choke point is an ancient prize. The Athenians tried it when they fortified the Hellespont; the Venetians lived from it when they squeezed the Adriatic; the Aragonese and Angevins fought over access to the Tyrrhenian. Whoever can close the throat through which trade must pass holds a hand on the windpipe of rivals. A prudent republic, seeing this, either makes the passage truly free so that all are its debtors, or seizes it fully and accepts the enmity that follows. What one cannot do is preach freedom of navigation last month and charge a fat toll this month without looking ridiculous as well as grasping.

The president not only asserts the right to tax passage, he boasts that “other nations are very wealthy” and will reimburse the United States for guarding the strait. Here he avoids auxiliaries in one sense — the warships are American — yet reaches for them in another, demanding tribute after the fact. When I wrote in The Prince, in W. K. Marriott’s translation, that a prince must rely on arms of his own, I meant also that he must be ready to bear the costs of those arms. Whoever expects to be feared at sea while haggling over invoices on land ends by inviting allies to count his coins and question his resolve.

Worse, the measure contradicts his own ministers, who had claimed no country may charge for use of that waterway. A prince can err boldly against his enemies and recover, but open discord with his closest advisors is poison, because it tells friends and foes that there is no single will. Either the ministers were fools yesterday or the prince is reckless today; in both cases, others conclude they must hedge against such inconstancy. In The Prince I compared fortuna to a flooding river, as translated by Marriott; here the flood is not only events in Hormuz, but also the confusion of a government that breaks its own dykes with conflicting words.

The Iranians read this schism and answer with a mixture of bravado and half-accommodation. Their foreign minister mocks twenty percent as too much, yet agrees that safe passage should be compensated, promising that Iran “will be fair.” This is not peace; it is a bid to seize the moral appearance while continuing the material contest. They want the world to see one side as extortionist and the other as reasonable guardian. Most men judge by the eyes, not the hands; I have seen whole wars won in reputation before they were won in the field. The United States, by overturning a fresh memorandum and taxing the channel it once said no one might tax, has gifted its rival a good costume.

The strategy itself — to “take over the strait” with a blockade and toll — is harsh but intelligible. A great power that wishes to maintain its rank must sometimes remind the world where the guns are. Severity, if well used, is quick, necessary, and then restrained; it terrifies a few to spare the many. But here I see the vice of the middle course. The words are maximalist, the enforcement so far is partial, the legal basis is muddled, and the internal chorus is off-key. You pay the costs of escalation without securing the fruits of conquest. In such cases fortuna does not merely share the stage with virtù; she writes the second act herself, and never in the way the first actor intends.

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