They don’t have the military capability to close the world’s most important waterway
Every five years, the Iranians would threaten the whole world that they would close the Strait of Hormuz. They never did. They simply can’t do it and they are not capable of doing it even if they wanted to do it.
The Strait of Hormuz is the most important waterway in the world. It is about 35 miles wide. And an average of 15 oil tankers pass through it each day. Most people associate the Strait of Hormuz’s width with the navigation channel and the traffic separation scheme. This is a normal maritime procedure to separate inbound and outbound traffic. The width of the navigation channel is only six miles including the traffic separation scheme. The traffic is monitored by the Sultanate of Oman by radar located on an Omani island. Ships do eventually pass thorough Omani and Iranian territorial waters. A two-mile wide navigation channel is very narrow in maritime terms. And the strait is very shallow.
My first experience with navigating the Strait of Hormuz was in 1983. The strait is very challenging to navigate. You are restricted in your ability to maneuver.
Mariners still remember the collision in the early morning hours of March 20, 2009 between a US Navy submarine (USS Hartford) and a US Navy ship (USS New Orleans) when they were operating in the Strait of Hormuz. And on Jan. 10, 2007 there was a collision between a Japanese tanker and the US Navy submarine, USS Newport. This shows how difficult it is to operate in the strait.
