President Donald Trump has resorted to naval blockades to pressure the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and now Iran to comply with his demands, but in the Middle East his preferred tactic is facing a reality that is radically different from that in the Caribbean Sea.
Iran, unlike Cuba or Venezuela, is blocking a key energy trade route, meaning the longer the conflict drags on, the more the global economy will suffer. Tehran also poses a greater military threat than that posed by U.S. adversaries in its own hemisphere, and requires a sustained military presence far from U.S. shores.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz gives Iran great leverage during the shaky truce, as rising economic risks — especially higher U.S. fuel prices in an election year — could force the Republican Trump administration to end its blockade of Iranian ports and coastline, experts say.
“The question now is which side — the United States or Iran — can hold out longer,“ said Max Booth, a military historian and senior fellow for national security at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The effectiveness of Trump's pressure tactics — using the world's most powerful navy to block trade in sanctioned Iranian oil and other goods — is still under review. is a subject of intense debate. Some experts say Trump's success in Venezuela probably owes more to the U.S. military operation that captured leader Nicolas Maduro than to U.S. warships seizing sanctioned oil tankers to impose U.S. control over Venezuela.
Meanwhile, the U.S. oil embargo on Cuba has triggered the island's worst economic crisis in decades. Although U.S. and Cuban officials recently met on the island for unusual talks, the financial pressure has failed to achieve the Trump administration's stated goal of a change of leadership.
“I think the success of the mission against Maduro in Venezuela has probably given the president confidence,“ said Todd Huntley, director of the National Security Law Program at Georgetown University.
But that doesn't make the situations in Venezuela and Iran similar -- geographically, militarily, or politically. “There are some significant differences,“ said Huntley, a retired Navy captain and military attorney general.
Although the U.S.-imposed blockade of Iran has dealt a severe blow to Tehran's economy, including by stopping cargo ships from importing various goods, Iran has still been able to transport some of its oil that is subject to sanctions, according to ship-tracking companies.
The Islamic Republic has rejected Trump's demands to open the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil normally passes, and this week it again attacked ships.
The delayed shipments through the strait have sent gas prices soaring far beyond the region and raised the cost of food and many other items, creating a political problem for Trump ahead of the November midterm elections.
“Blockades are usually just one tool in a mechanism used in conflict“, said Salvatore Mercogliano, a professor of maritime history at Campbell University in North Carolina. “They could be important. But that's just one element. And I don't think that's going to be enough to convince the Iranians.“
“Not a single ship has evaded American forces“, said Admiral Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, last week. The command, which oversees the Middle East, said it had ordered 31 ships to turn back or return to port as of yesterday.
Merchant shipping officials are skeptical. Lloyd's List Intelligence, a specialized maritime data and analytics platform, said that since April 13, “a steady stream of shadow fleet traffic“ has passed through the Persian Gulf, including 11 tankers carrying Iranian cargo that left the Gulf of Oman outside the strait.
Maritime intelligence firm Windward said this week that Iranian traffic continues "through deception."
Iranian ships have several ways to evade the blockade, including falsifying their location tracking data or traveling through Pakistani territorial waters, Mercogliano said. He also noted that the sheer volume of shipping traffic the military has to screen is a challenging task.
The last time the United States imposed a blockade similar to the one targeting Iranian ships was during the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, when the United States imposed a blockade on Cuba, Huntley said. “And it wasn't even called a blockade,“ he said. “We called it a quarantine.“
Some naval blockades in history have had an impact, such as the British blockade of Germany during World War I. “But they tend to have a very long-term impact, whereas Trump is looking for short-term, quick results“, according to Booth, the military historian.
He said Trump probably believes that the blockade of sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela played a key role in the change of power there. But Booth stressed that it was more about the removal of Maduro and the subsequent cooperation of his vice president and current interim president, Delcy Rodriguez.
“There is no Delcy Rodriguez in Cuba or Iran,“ Booth said. “I think his success in Venezuela has fooled him into thinking that this is a model that can be replicated elsewhere. He sees it as a huge success with a small cost. And in fact, it turns out that this is a unique combination of circumstances.“
Translated from English: Elena Indjeva, BTA