FORBES
Trump’s Hormuz Blockade Has Been Planned For Years
Ilan Berman
April 15, 2026

…A decade-and-a-half ago, while on a visit to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida, I had a candid exchange with a senior military official deeply focused on the Iranian “file.” Even back then, the regime’s energy weapon loomed large in American strategic thinking. CENTCOM’s nightmare scenario, he told me, was not a complete closure of the Strait but a deliberate “narrowing” of it. Through tactics like minelaying, naval drills and the harassment of transiting vessels, Tehran could constrict the flow of oil through the Strait enough to cause a spike in global oil prices without ever presenting Washington with a clear casus belli. The planned countermove, however, was equally revealing. If Iran ever interfered with the Strait in a meaningful way, the official told me, the waterway would “remain closed – by us.” Such a response would accomplish two critical objectives: it would rob the Iranian regime of its most vital source of hard currency, and it would quickly turn every country relying on Gulf oil into a stakeholder in the containment of the Iranian regime. The logic was elegant. America had the ability to turn Iran’s greatest geographic advantage into a dangerous vulnerability. And that’s precisely what is happening now. READ MORE