US military operations erode Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz is, in the simplest terms, the world’s most important bottleneck. Roughly a fifth of global oil supply passes through a channel barely 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, and for decades Iran has used that geography as leverage. That leverage is now significantly diminished, according to US officials tracking the results of a sustained American military campaign that began in the summer of 2026. The campaign has included airstrikes on Iranian military infrastructure, naval escort operations for commercial vessels, and a mine-clearing effort that US Central Command declared complete by late August 2026. From 100 ships a day to a handful Before hostilities escalated, the strait was handling somewhere between 15 and 20 million barrels of oil per day, carried by more than 100 vessels moving through the waterway on any given day. At the height of Iranian interdiction efforts, that traffic collapsed to just a handful of ships. Iran’s campaign involved repeated strikes on commercial shipping, a strategy designed to assert authority over transit. The US military responded by targeting more than 80 Iranian sites in July 2026 alone. The objective was no longer simply d...