Western allies trying to negotiate a way to protect the Strait of Hormuz for energy shipping face a stark reality: a similar effort in the Red Sea that started years earlier cost billions of dollars and ultimately failed against Yemen's Houthis, Reuters reports.
The costly Red Sea experience - four ships sunk, more than $1 billion in weapons expended, and a route that the shipping industry still largely avoids - looms over the more complex Strait of Hormuz, the shipping artery used by roughly a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supply and now blocked by Iran, a more formidable adversary than the Houthis.
Iran's threats to the strait and its attacks on energy infrastructure in nearby Gulf nations have sent oil prices soaring in the worst disruption to oil and gas supplies in history. Absent the strait's reopening, shortages will become more acute, threatening higher costs for energy, food and numerous other products worldwide.
"There is no substitute for the Strait of Hormuz," Kuwait Petroleum CEO Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said.
U.N. Security Council members were negotiating resolutions for protecting the strait.
Reuters interviewed 19 security and maritime experts who described the myriad challenges facing the U.S. and its allies in protecting the strait. Iran has far more advanced military forces than the Houthis, an arsenal of cheap drones, floating mines, and missiles, and easy access from its steep mountainous coast to the narrow waterway.
"Defending convoy operations in the Strait of Hormuz is significantly more challenging than in the Red Sea," said retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery.
Trump has been noncommittal about U.S. involvement. Iran has blocked most ships from the maritime chokepoint since joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran began February 28.
The U.S. mission to protect Red Sea shipping from the Houthis launched in December 2023. The allies shot down hundreds of drones and missiles, but the Houthis still sank four ships. Shippers now largely avoid the passageway, opting for a much longer voyage around the Horn of Africa.
The danger zone around the Strait of Hormuz is up to five times bigger than the Houthis' attack area around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Unlike the Houthis, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a professional military with its own weapons factories and access to funding.
Providing escorts for the strait would require as many as a dozen large warships backed up by jets, drones and helicopters.
Sea mines and heavily armed mini-submarines are a threat the U.S. did not encounter in the Red Sea.
A combination of mine clearing, military escorts and air patrols should eventually get strait traffic moving again.
