I stood once on the deck of a tanker edging through the narrow waters off Oman, watching the Iranian coastline flicker in the distance. The Strait of Hormuz has always felt like a throat the world cannot afford to let anyone squeeze. This week that old tension snapped back into violence.
The United States carried out new strikes on Iranian targets, among them coastal defence systems and sites storing cruise missiles on Greater Tunb Island. CENTCOM announced the completion of a 90-minute wave of attacks. Some of those blows landed in daylight, a signal that restraint had run its course.
At an IRGC military base in Saravan, in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, two buildings were destroyed overnight on 13-14 July. According to Zaryon OSINT via X, geolocated imagery confirmed the damage. Days later a separate strike on a southeastern Iranian military base killed seven Iranian army soldiers and wounded 13 more. The pace has clearly quickened.
CBS News reported that the US military launched this latest wave as it reinstated its naval blockade against Iran. The immediate trigger was Iranian attacks on ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz. For weeks Tehran had threatened to close the chokepoint that carries a significant share of the world’s oil and LNG. Traffic slowed. Prices jumped. The logic of blockade and strike became hard to escape.
This round of fighting is not new. US strikes against Iran have continued since February, following the opening joint operations with Israel on 28 February. Iranian responses followed the familiar pattern: missile and drone barrages across the region, fresh attempts on shipping, disruption of energy exports. A ceasefire in April bought time but settled nothing. The underlying contest over who controls the flow of energy out of the Gulf never went away.
Critics will call this escalation. Yet the alternative has been tested and found wanting. Years of half-measures left Iranian forces bolder, their proxies busier, the sea lanes less safe. When a state begins firing on merchant vessels in one of the planet’s busiest waterways, the cost of looking away rises faster than any bomb. Washington has chosen to answer force with force, protecting not only its allies but the wider principle that trade routes cannot be held hostage.
