The Strait over the bomb: Controlling chokepoint is Iran’s war strategy

"The spice must flow."

Frank Herbert's seminal novel 'Dune' framed the empire through control of a single, indispensable resource. In the Iran war, the metaphor is almost too neat. Replace spice with oil, Arrakis with the Strait of Hormuz, and you have the same strategic truth: whoever controls the flow dictates the terms of conflict.

What began as a campaign premised on speed and superiority has instead evolved into something slower, messier, and far more dangerous — a war shaped less by American firepower than by Iranian patience. And this is no longer a contest of strength. It is a contest of endurance. This is precisely the type of war that the United States president Donald Trump promised not to start but ended up starting anyway. 

At its core, this war is no longer about regime change, nuclear programmes, or even battlefield victories. It is about control of geography, of trade routes, and of the global economy. 

As Iran leverages the Strait of Hormuz and its allies threaten the Bab el-Mandeb, the conflict has evolved into a struggle over the world's most critical maritime chokepoints. For the United States, the challenge is no longer how to win the war, but whether it can end it on its own terms. 

For Iran, the objective is clearer: survive, endure, and hold the straits. Because in a global system built on uninterrupted flows—of oil, goods, and capital—the power to disrupt may ultimately matter more than the power to destroy.

Iran's new strategic doctrine

If the early years of confrontation with Iran were defined by fears of nuclear escalation, the current war has revealed a different reality: control of the Strait of Hormuz now matters far more to Tehran than any atomic capability ever did.

Roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supply once passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Today, Iran's ability to choke or regulate that flow has given it something its nuclear programme never quite achieved: immediate, tangible, and global deterrence. As Vali Nasr, a former senior US official, has observed, for Iran the nuclear programme was "symbolic", but the strait is existential. It is, in his words, "their only deterrence and only source of revenue."

This shift marks a profound recalibration of Iranian strategy. Nuclear weapons, even if developed, offer deterrence through fear of escalation. The strait, by contrast, offers continuous coercive power. It allows Iran to exert pressure not just on adversaries, but on the entire global economy—energy markets, shipping lanes, insurance rates, and supply chains. It is deterrence through disruption. 

Iran has built its strategy around survival. It has accepted that initial damage is inevitable. Its priority is preserving enough military capacity to continue striking back. This is why its forces are decentralised, its missile systems dispersed, and its infrastructure hardened.

Tehran appears to understand this well. Legislative moves are already underway to formalise control, including proposals to charge transit fees and restrict passage to "friendly" nations. Control of the strait would allow Iran to impose what analysts describe as selective sanctions in reverse—deciding who gets access to energy flows and who does not. This would not only undermine Western sanctions regimes but also permanently alter the balance of power in the Gulf. Even a weakened Iran, if it retains control of Hormuz, remains strategically potent.

A war run without a steady hand

If Iran's approach is deliberate, Washington increasingly appears improvised at a time Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has emerged as the most aggressive voice pushing escalation. His alleged dismissal of senior generals in the middle of an active conflict has raised alarm within military circles. It has been widely speculated that they have been fired for not siding with Hegseth's hawkish visions.

At the top, Trump's messaging remains conflicted. He speaks of ending the war in weeks, even as the machinery of escalation continues to turn. The result is a campaign that is tactically forceful but strategically adrift. 

On paper, the US-Israeli campaign has delivered results. Thousands of targets have been hit. Iranian air defences have been degraded. Key figures have been eliminated. Yet the war continues, with no clear endpoint in sight. This is the central contradiction of the current strategy. Tactical success has not translated into strategic closure.

The reliance on airpower reflects a familiar belief: that precision strikes can force political outcomes. But Iran's ability to continue launching missiles and drones, despite sustained bombardment, suggests that its core war-fighting capacity remains intact.

More importantly, there appears to be no agreed endgame. Is the objective regime change? Deterrence? Negotiated settlement? The answers shift depending on who is speaking and when. Wars without clear political objectives tend to drift. And drifting wars tend to expand.

Iran's doctrine: Survive, stretch, and strangle

To understand the current battlefield, you have to understand what Iran is actually trying to do.

Iran has built its strategy around survival. It has accepted that initial damage is inevitable. Its priority is preserving enough military capacity to continue striking back. This is why its forces are decentralised, its missile systems dispersed, and its infrastructure hardened. 

Even after weeks of bombardment, at least half of its military capability remains intact, as the CNN has reported. They wrote that roughly half of Iran's missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran's arsenal despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes against military targets over the past five weeks, according to recent US intelligence assessments. 

So, Iran knows it can hold out on the ground. And the confidence of the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has hardly shaken from the time he said on live TV, "We are waiting for them. In a ground war, we can do it even better. We are completely ready to confront any sort of ground attack. We hope they do not make such a mistake." 

Iran's geography is not incidental. It is central to its strategy. Surrounded by mountains on three sides and sea on the fourth, the country forms a natural defensive basin. Any invading force would face constrained entry points, difficult terrain, and constant exposure to missile and drone attacks.

This is not Iraq in 2003. It is something far more complex. Even securing limited objectives — such as reopening the Strait of Hormuz by force would require tens of thousands of troops and a prolonged presence. The costs, both human and economic, would be staggering. And this is precisely where Iran wants the war to go.

Professor Dr Roy Casagranda, a prominent historian, said in a podcast, "It's impossible to know (how the war would go) because we don't know what Trump's going to do. He thinks it's genius, but making random decisions with no thought put into it is not genius. There's nothing brilliant about that." 

He added, "This would be a catastrophe that I don't know how the United States could extract itself from. This would make things go from bad to so much worse. Right now having troops in the region is good because the fleet is waiting. Iran doesn't know what's going to happen next and you leave them hanging and keep them guessing. As soon as you start to land the troops now Iran knows what's going to happen next and that's taken off the table." 

Military planners have long understood that reopening the Strait of Hormuz by force is far more complicated than political rhetoric suggests. It is not a single operation, but a sustained campaign — one that would require air superiority, large-scale mine-clearing missions, and constant protection of commercial shipping lanes under fire. 

Iran's layered defences, from naval mines to coastal missile batteries and drone swarms, are designed precisely to make the strait contested rather than closed. As several US analysts have noted in past war-gaming exercises, the number of troops and assets required to secure the waterway is staggering, and even in the best-case scenario, reopening it could take weeks, if not months.

When war stops listening

Carl von Clausewitz once wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means. But he also warned that war acquires a logic of its own. One that can override the intentions of those who start it. That warning feels increasingly relevant.

Trump is trying to shape the war around his political objectives. Iran is trying to shape the war around its strategic strengths. Between the two, the battlefield is no longer responding to design, but to momentum. And momentum, once lost, is rarely easy to reclaim.

Because in this war, as in Dune, the central truth remains unchanged: The flow must continue. The question is — Who controls it? 

Shadique Mahbub Islam is a journalist.