How Iran is winning

0:01Noel King:It only Tuesday and the average price of a gallon of gas in these United States just topped$4. So President Trump is proposing a new strategy to get oil from Iran's Strait of Hormuz for, quote, all of those countries that can't get jet fuel. Truth Social. Build up some delayed courage, go to the strait and just take it. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil. But then crude oil prices rose again after an Iranian drone set a Kuwaiti oil tanker on fire.

0:47Noel King:So, yeah. Coming up on Today Explained, how and where and why Iran is winning this war.

1:24We'll see you next time.

1:36This is Today Explained.

1:38Noel King:Jerry Doyle, he's the global defense editor at Bloomberg News. Jerry, what's the Strait of Hormuz? The Strait of Hormuz is this little dogleg of water between Iran and Oman, basically, a little bit of the UAE. And it's important because all of the Persian Gulf countries that produce oil, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, all use that waterway to get their oil out. As long as there are no stress factors on the waterway, things such as war or mines, that's just the easiest and cheapest way to do it.

2:23The biggest action in the Strait of Hamuz at the moment is that Iran is able to get its oil out through the strait. Meanwhile, U.S. ships and any oil that's been sort of generated in the other Gulf countries is not getting out. A global energy supply choked off. Where 20 percent of the world's oil once flowed, hundreds of oil tankers now idle. At least 18 ships have already been attacked in and around the strait, according to the U.N. Foreign Minister Arakshi, thank you so much for your time this morning, sir. Will the Straits of Hormuz remain closed so long as this war continues? It is only closed to the tankers and ships belonging to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies.

3:14Saudi Arabia has a pipeline running across to the Red Sea that it has been able to pump out something like 7 million barrels per day. But that doesn't come close to hitting the shortfall that has resulted from the strait being closed.

3:31Noel King:How did Iran actually shut the Strait of Hormuz down? Like, how is it keeping these giant tankers from just going through? The easiest way to put it is Iran has shut down the strait by virtue of being where it is. There have been reports that some mines are in the water. Some sea mines have been placed in the water. Those haven't been confirmed. But it doesn't really matter whether those mines are there or not, whether there are a few mines, whether there are a lot of mines, whether there are no mines. As long as there's a threat, as long as there's a war going on, they have to act as though there are mines there.

4:07And Iran also has a large stockpile of anti-ship missiles that it can easily target ships in the Strait of Hormuz and even into the Persian Gulf and below, making a transit really difficult just by virtue of the fact that if you go through without permission, if you try to go through without permission, then there's a good chance that you will get hit.

4:29Noel King:I understand how landmines work. How do you actually mine the water, though? Well, there's several ways that sea mines can work. They can be placed on the seabed and activated by a ship passing overhead with acoustic sensors or magnetic sensors. They can float in the water free, not attached to anything, just sort of driven around by the tides or water current that will be activated by brushing up against the ship or even the sound of a ship nearby. There's other mines that can be moored to the seabed so that you can sort of keep track of where they are. They float some distance below the surface where the hull of a ship would be, and they stay in one place.

5:14So it's not that difficult to see how just any of those types of mines would make passage difficult. Sources today have told CBS that Iran has laid about a dozen mines in the strait. Mines are a scary thing to be dealing with as a mariner, as a ship's captain. It's something we don't want to fool around with.

5:38Noel King:This is maybe an insane question, Jerry, given what the United States has done in Iran over the last month. But is blocking the Strait of Hormuz legal? Like, this is such an important waterway. It seems like maybe at some point someone said, there's a maritime law. You've got to let ships pass, otherwise the global economy goes to hell. I mean, that is true. It is a maritime law. Freedom of navigation sort of underpins a lot of global commerce, right? What's happening in the Strait of Hormuz sort of cuts against that. Iran has reportedly charged fees up to$2 million for a tanker or cargo ship to pass through.

6:19That also cuts against freedom of navigation and freedom of transit. And so, yeah, it's not legal what Iran is doing. It doesn't own the entire strait or all the waters of it. And commercial ships should be able to pass through without any trouble. But because of the war, they're not.

6:40Noel King:Okay, so arguably everybody is breaking some laws in this war. Certainly in the U.S. we are having that debate in earnest. But you told me that Iranian oil is getting out. What does that mean for Iran and what does that mean for the rest of the world? Well, for Iran, it means that they're actually making more money per day than they were before the war. Because oil prices have gone up significantly. They are making something, by our estimates, about$139 million a day in March, which is up by$20 million or so from what they were making in February before the war. They've been able to get roughly 1.6 million barrels per day out, which is on par with what they were doing before the war.

7:26So because they're allowing their own oil out and they are taking the money for it, selling it mostly in China, that allows them to continue to profit from their oil even though nobody else is able to get theirs out. Now, for the rest of the world, the picture is not as great. 20 % of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's oil is just a small fraction of that. So they've been able to get their oil out, but it is coming nowhere near making up the shortfall of having the entire straight close. And so as the global economy tries to absorb the shock of missing that daily supply of oil, you're starting to see it leak into all aspects or many different aspects of the economy.

8:16For instance, things like fertilizer, which are heavily reliant on petroleum products and refining, those are starting to become more scarce.

8:25Noel King:So if things don't change, we'll be paying a lot more for fertilizer. In just three weeks, the price of nitrogen fertilizer went from$480 to$700 a ton. So that means things like crop yields could start to become worse. And that, of course, would mean food prices could start to go up. Obviously, oil also, refined oil, petroleum products, diesel fuel, ship fuel, gasoline for your car, those things are also becoming more scarce. The fuel I will need to buy this spring will be in the 30 % higher than before the war started. It used to be 60-something to fill my tank, now it's 90-something. And as we use gasoline or diesel fuel to move around a lot of goods within the United States, within Europe, with other countries, other places with large landmass, you're going to start to see the price of those goods go up as well.

9:23So losing that supply of oil, we're just starting to see the effects of that. And I think a lot of economists expect that if it goes on for another month or another two months even, it could really become dramatic.

9:38Noel King:I would think that if the war ends, Iran says, OK, it's over. The U.S. says, OK, it's over. And then the Strait of Hormuz opens back up. We get back to normal pretty quickly? Well, it depends on how much damage has been done, right? There's been a lot of missiles and bombs flying around the region that have hit gas production infrastructure, that have hit oil production and distribution infrastructure. So those are not things you can instantly switch on and have working back at 100 percent. Also, the Strait of Hormuz, even if there is no war, even if Iran has promised to not fire into the strait, promised there aren't any mines there, even if there's been some sort of military solution where Iran's ability to launch missiles and mines has been completely and indisputably destroyed, it's still going to take some time to make sure that that entire waterway is free of mines.

10:34Noel King:There is another key waterway in this region, Bab al-Mandab. And as I understand it, if I'm looking at my map right, you've got the Strait of Hormuz on one side of Saudi Arabia. Bab al-Mandab is on the other side of Saudi Arabia. Late last week, the Houthis in Yemen entered this war. And many analysts said, oh, wow, we might have another problem here. What is the threat on the other side of Saudi Arabia? Well, the threat there is, yeah, ships trying to pass north that need to get to the Suez Canal could come under a missile attack from the Houthis. So what you would see if the Houthis entered the war and started attacking shipping on the other side is, you know, it would make it difficult for, among other things, that Saudi pipeline, which feeds across Saudi Arabia and into an oil terminal on that side, make it harder to get oil to get out.

11:26and also, of course, affect other types of shipping as well, not just oil. So, you know, there are additional shocks to commerce and to the economy that could happen if the Houthis really get involved in earnest.

11:41Noel King:So what, a month in, what options does the United States have here? Broadly, if you want to end the war, you have to either do it through military force, which is to completely ensure that Iran no longer has control of its military, no longer has the military mean to shut down the strait or attack oil infrastructure around the region. Or you negotiate a settlement, like you get out of the war via diplomacy. Those are really the only two options at this point.

12:19Noel King:Jerry Doyle is the global defense editor at Bloomberg News. Coming up, is the U.S. going to put boots on the ground?

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15:55Noel King:That's right. If you believe in the journalism that we do as much as we do, you can become a Vox member. Vox.com slash members 30 % off. Can you believe it? Let's go. Your first year. Sign up now. Thank you. This is Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. President Trump has been using Truth Social to telegraph his war plans. One of them is a possible attack on Karg Island. Truth Social. If the Hormuz Strait is not immediately, quote, open for business, we will conclude our lovely, quote, stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, and Karg Island.

16:42Noel King:Phil Stewart, chief national security correspondent from Reuters, calls the island Iran's economic jugular. About 90 % of Iran's oil is exported through Karg. And so blowing it up would be a very big deal. And Trump is reportedly considering something else that would be a bigger deal. Which is deploying, you know, ground forces to go into the island, either for a little bit of time or for a significant amount of time to really make sure that Iran can't get access to this place that is so vital for its economy. If the U.S. were to deploy troops to Karg Island, how big of a deal would that be? Well, it would be a tremendous undertaking.

17:21It would be one of the most complicated operations that it's carried out in many years. And the reason for that is just because it's so close to Iran. You know, it's just miles off of Iran's mainland. and it's within rocket range and within range of drones and all kinds of other projectiles that could be fired, that would be fired at U.S. forces seeking to occupy it.

17:43Noel King:So if U.S. forces were to deploy to this island, we should not assume that Iran would throw its hands up and say, okay, guys, Iran would fight back? They would absolutely fight back. And not only would they fight back, but the war that's already become a regional war would almost certainly intensify because the Iranians haven't really retaliated against energy infrastructure in the way that they could if Karg Island were taken off the board for them. They would really see it as like this is an existential threat and it is time to pull out all the stops. They have said they would attack energy infrastructure elsewhere in the Gulf.

18:24All the walls of the border, the energy source and the foreign authorities of the Soviet Union So all of US allies would see their energy infrastructure attack. They've threatened desalinization plants that Arab allies of the United States rely on in order to have water for their people. Bahrain's government said an Iranian drone strike damaged a Bahraini desalination plant. Kuwait says one Indian national has been killed in an attack on a power and water desalination plant. All of this infrastructure is just sitting out in the open, and it requires an intense amount of air defense to protect.

19:00And that's what we've seen is just the U.S. and its Gulf allies going through enormous amounts of air defense to try and protect these cities and structures and bases. And if the Iranians were really to go after energy infrastructure in a serious way, it could have global repercussions very, very quickly.

19:21All right.

19:22Noel King:So we actually don't know what the president's plans are with respect to Cargilland, but we are speaking on Monday morning. You and I are. And this morning, Trump posted on Truth Social, the U.S. will completely obliterate all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Cargilland. I mean, that is as that seems like as explicit a threat as one can make. What do you make of what he said there? The president has really vacillated between these two extremes. One is escalation, like he's talking about in that tweet, you know, full maximalist escalation where the U.S. will go after the most important energy infrastructure that Iran has.

20:03And it's a nation that relies on energy for its entire economy, right? And for, you know, powering hospitals and schools and other things that are important, not just for the military, but for civilians. Our military is the greatest in the world by far. Iran is being decimated. Thank you. Those kind of maximalist comments on the one hand. On the other hand, he's talking about negotiations. So we've had very good negotiations today with Iran. All weekend, you had senior Trump administration officials talking about their efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict. So we don't really know where we're going to end up.

20:36And one possibility that where we could end up is something in the middle where you have U.S. forces temporarily deploying to some places to put more pressure on Iran, something that the U.S. military has been planning to do. And it is possible that instead of choosing one of these two options, one is complete escalation and the other is negotiation, you might see come to fruition these plans the military has been putting on the board for some time, which are limited occupation of islands or shoreline along the Strait of Hormuz.

21:10Noel King:The problem, I think one might say, is that limited occupation seems to be something that the U.S. has planned for in the past and then it wasn't so limited. Yeah? Absolutely. You know, there is a real risk of mission creep. But I would argue that that is something that the folks that I've spoken to are aware of. They're aware of the mission creep risks. They don't have the kind of military movements of ground forces into the region that you would expect ahead of a major ground invasion. So all of the kinds of things that we're seeing, the movement of forces that we've seen are much more closely aligned with the idea of a limited operation and not a major invasion.