As President Trump’s war on Iran enters its third week, here are five points about Tehran’s predictable—and predicted—closure of the Strait of Hormuz:

1. The Wall Street Journal reported that “Trump knew the risk of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. He still went to war.” The President brushed off the warning from Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine because he believed Tehran would quickly capitulate first.

2. Since 2002, five different war games, simulations and analyses carried out by the Pentagon, national security experts and think tanks assessed the outcomes of a U.S. conflict with Iran. Four of five predicted Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz using mines, missiles and swarms of small boats would be Tehran’s primary response to an American attack.

3. That prediction wasn’t hypothetical. During the final years of the Iraq-Iran war (a conflict in which Washington funded both sides), the United States reflagged Kuwaiti and other vessels and provided naval escorts through the Strait in 1987 and 1988. As the U.S. Naval Institute recounted in June 2025, “Operation Earnest Will” was hardly an unblemished success.

4. That experience and the current reality of Iran’s drones, mines and anti-ship missiles mean securing the Strait of Hormuz for the safe passage of oil tankers would entail a major, high-risk operation the U.S. military is not currently prepared to execute. As the Wall Street Journal explained on Saturday, “Trump wants to secure Hormuz. Here’s what it would take.”

5. President Trump, who launched his war without rallying or even notifying American allies, is now calling for an international naval force “hopefully” including China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK and others “so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated.” Sadly, hoping and begging do not constitute a strategy and are quite unbecoming look for the Commander-in-Chief now resorting to groveling to fix a problem he himself created.