OPINION:
Forty-seven years ago, the Islamic Republic of Iran vowed “Marg bar Amrika!” (“Death to America!”)
That declaration of war was followed by multiple acts of war, from the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran to the orchestration of two bombings of Americans in Beirut in 1983 to the arming of Shiite militias that killed more than 600 Americans in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, and numerous kidnappings and assassination attempts.
American attempts to end the war diplomatically failed. Five U.S. presidents vowed that Iran’s rulers would never be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran’s rulers repeated what Ruhollah Khomeini, father of the Islamic Revolution, observed in 1979: “The Americans can’t do a damn thing against us.”
Even the 12-day war in June, which culminated when American B-2 stealth bombers dropped Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Iranian nuclear facilities, failed to diminish the regime’s ambition and determination to build back better.
Last month, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said Iranian negotiators kicked off a meeting by announcing that they “controlled 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium,” which “could make 11 nuclear bombs.”
The world has never seen anything like this. On second thought, maybe the world has.
Back when the United States was a young republic, there were the Barbary States, Islamic regimes along the North African coast. Piracy was their policy: seizing American merchant ships in the Mediterranean and enslaving their crews.
Presidents Washington and John Adams tried diplomacy, including paying tribute. The jihadis saw that as weakness and carried on.
Finally, President Jefferson decided to give war a chance, sending the Marines to fight on sea and land, including on “the shores of Tripoli.”
The challenge for the third American president was to stay the course until the battle was decisively won. The challenge for the 47th American president is the same, though the threat is greater and the stakes are higher today.
While much of the mainstream media wishcast a quagmire, the combined U.S.-Israeli operation has, over just two weeks, seriously degraded the regime’s nuclear facilities, military capabilities and repression apparatus. It has eliminated thousands of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia and other security forces.
In response, the surviving members of the regime have played what they believe to be their trump card (please forgive the pun): targeting the production of oil by their Arab neighbors and preventing the flow of oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.
Through this body of water — just 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, with 2-mile-wide navigable shipping lanes — roughly 20% of global oil has transited over recent decades.
Cutting off that supply has raised the cost of oil. To an unprecedented level? Not at all. For instance, on June 14, 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the price at the pump hit a record high of $5.02 per gallon.
Iran’s rulers are nonetheless betting that President Trump will cave if they can push prices higher. They will then say: “See? We survived! We beat the Great Satan, and we still control the world’s most important energy chokepoint! We’re winners! Trump is a loser!”
So winning the battle of Hormuz is essential. Is it a mission impossible? The military experts I’m talking with say it will take time — but weeks, not months — to destroy the regime’s anti-ship missiles, drones, mines and fast-attack craft, the asymmetric arsenal used by the naval arm of the IRGC, along with the facilities that produce them.
After that, the United States, together with any willing and able nations, should guarantee freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz — a basic principle of international law, the modern expression of the centuries-old principle of freedom of the seas.
On March 14, Mr. Trump announced on social media that Tehran’s military facilities on Kharg Island, about 300 miles northwest of the strait, had been “obliterated” by American airpower. Kharg Island handles up to 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports, which then pass through the strait to reach global markets.
Close to half of China’s seaborne crude oil imports take that route.
Mr. Trump emphasized that this operation was carried out with such exquisite precision that the oil infrastructure is still standing. “However,” he added on social media, “should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.”
A Marine Expeditionary Unit is now on its way to the region. To seize the 7.7-square-mile limestone outcrop? That’s an option.
If you’re a patriotic American, then you want the United States to win. A definition of total victory: The jihadi regime in Iran is defanged and crippled, incapable of reconstituting its nuclear program. Its capacity to wage war on the U.S. and its allies is broken, its repression apparatus hobbled, its attacks on commercial shipping halted, and the Iranian people enabled to seize this once-in-a-generation chance to free themselves from the oppressive, mass-murdering theocracy.
More broadly, we could then enter an era in which the Middle East is dominated by U.S. allies. That will allow the U.S. to focus elsewhere.
For example, if the Strait of Hormuz is under American control when Mr. Trump next talks with Xi Jinping, China’s communist ruler, he might tell him: “I know your economy depends on the oil that passes through the strait, which is now firmly under my protection. That’s good for you, my friend! Unless, of course, other conflicts erupt in other regions like — oh, just spitballing here — maybe some island in East Asia.”
“And by the way: Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
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