Securing the Strait of Hormuz: Why America Must Protect Global Energy

Twenty-one miles. That is the width of the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest point — a sliver of water between the Omani coast and the Iranian shore that serves as the jugular vein of the global economy. Approximately one-fifth of all the oil consumed on Earth every single day passes through that channel. Natural gas from Qatar feeds the power grids of Europe and Asia. Tankers carrying fuel for hospitals, factories, and heating systems in dozens of nations transit those waters continuously. And in March 2026, Iran tried to shut it down.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard declared the Strait "closed." Iranian drones and missiles struck oil tankers, set fire to a fuel storage facility at Kuwait International Airport, hit a QatarEnergy oil tanker with a ballistic missile, and halted LNG production at some of the world's largest facilities. Saudi Arabia shuttered the King Fahd Causeway. Stock markets in the Gulf suspended trading. Global energy prices spiked. In a matter of days, Iran demonstrated exactly what it had always threatened: that it was willing to hold the world's energy supply hostage to avoid accountability for its own aggression.
The Biden years gave us a preview of what Iranian emboldening looks like. Year after year of nuclear negotiations, of sanction waivers, of looking the other way as Iranian oil revenues funded Hezbollah and the Houthis. The result was a regime that grew more confident, more aggressive, and more dangerous with each passing year. When America signals it will not act, Iran acts. That is not a theory — it is a track record.
Republicans understand something the globalist left refuses to accept: energy is not just an economic issue. It is a national security issue, a geopolitical weapon, and the foundation of every other element of modern civilization. When Iran mines the Strait of Hormuz, it is not just spiking gas prices — it is threatening to starve hospitals of generator fuel, to freeze manufacturing across Asia, to create the conditions for political instability in a dozen countries simultaneously. An adversary with that kind of leverage over the world economy is not a regional nuisance. It is a strategic threat of the first order.
That is why the Trump administration's response was correct, and why the bipartisan Washington establishment's instinct to "de-escalate" would have been catastrophic. Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer — to his credit — allowed American forces to use British bases to strike Iranian targets threatening the Strait. France announced naval escort operations. Dozens of nations that depend on that waterway for their economic survival were quietly grateful that someone was willing to act. The Strait of Hormuz is not Iranian territorial water. It is an international waterway protected by international law, and any nation that attempts to close it by force is committing an act of war against the entire global trading system.
There is also a domestic energy dimension to this story that deserves far more attention than it has received. American energy independence — the product of the shale revolution and years of deregulation championed by Republican administrations — is the single most important strategic asset the United States developed in the last two decades. Because of American oil and gas production, the United States is far less economically vulnerable to Hormuz disruptions than it was in 1973 or even 2005. That independence was not an accident. It was the result of policy choices: opening federal lands to drilling, streamlining pipeline permitting, resisting the green lobby's demands to kneecap domestic production in the name of climate ideology.
The lesson of the Hormuz crisis is the same lesson Ronald Reagan tried to teach and every Democrat since has tried to unlearn: weakness invites aggression. Energy dependence creates leverage for adversaries. The countries of Europe — many of which spent the last decade shutting down nuclear plants and blocking domestic energy development in pursuit of green utopias — found themselves economically exposed and strategically helpless when Iran moved. America was not helpless. America acted.
Securing the Strait of Hormuz is not optional. It is not someone else's problem. It is the kind of thing that only a nation with the military capability and the political will to use it can accomplish. Fortunately, for the first time in years, America has both.