Victory Lap, Closed Strait: Trump Signals Iran Exit Without Reopening Hormuz
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that President Trump has told aides he is prepared to wind down the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran while leaving the Strait of Hormuz largely closed — deferring what he views as an operationally complex reopening mission to a later phase, or to allies. The calculation is blunt: forcing the strait open would push the conflict past his stated four-to-six-week timeline, and Trump has decided that isn’t a price he’s willing to pay.
The pivot reframes the war’s stated objectives in real time. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that full reopening of the strait is not among the operation’s “core objectives,” which she defined as destroying Iran’s navy and missile infrastructure, dismantling its proxies, and neutralizing its nuclear program. Secretary of State Rubio tried to soften the signal, telling Al Jazeera the strait would “reopen one way or another” — either through Iranian compliance with international law or a coalition effort. The hedge does a lot of work.
Trump’s own messaging has been characteristically volatile. On Monday he posted that “great progress” was being made toward a deal, while simultaneously threatening to obliterate Iran’s power plants, oil wells, Kharg Island, and potentially its desalination infrastructure if Hormuz wasn’t immediately reopened. By Tuesday he was telling reporters the US would be “leaving very soon” — within two to three weeks — and that the remaining condition was simply that Iran be “put into the stone ages” without a near-term path to a nuclear weapon. The strait, apparently, can wait.
The strategic fallout from that posture is significant. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil transits Hormuz. US average retail gasoline prices crossed $4 a gallon Monday for the first time in over three years. Iran has effectively mined and blockaded the waterway since the opening weeks of the war, hitting tankers and making passage commercially unviable. Gulf states — the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman — have territorial waters in the strait but no appetite to act unilaterally against a partially decimated but still dangerous Iran. The UAE is reportedly preparing to help force the strait open militarily, but that planning is contingent on a broader coalition that doesn’t yet exist.
Trump’s second option, per the Journal, is to pressure European and Gulf allies into leading a reopening operation after US forces withdraw. He gestured at this publicly and crudely on Tuesday, posting that countries unable to secure jet fuel should “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.” He named the UK specifically for declining to participate in the decapitation of Iranian leadership, and called France “VERY UNHELPFUL” for restricting overflight rights for US supply runs to Israel. At the G7 meeting in France last Friday, Rubio had told allies the US doesn’t need them to reopen the strait — it just wants them to join a post-war maritime policing force. Everyone agreed, a source told Axios. Whether that agreement survives contact with reality is another matter.
Market analysts are skeptical that Trump will actually exit without attempting to restore access. Signum Global Advisors called such an outcome “extremely unlikely,” citing economic damage to the US, adverse impacts on Gulf allies, and the geopolitical cost of leaving Iran in de facto control of the world’s most critical oil chokepoint. Wolfe Research’s Tobin Marcus acknowledged Trump is clearly ready to end the war, but argued a hasty exit “without demonstrating that we can reopen the Strait of Hormuz militarily” would carry a political price Trump isn’t yet prepared to absorb.
The complication behind all of it: the US-Israeli decapitation campaign has gutted Iran’s leadership tier so thoroughly that Tehran may lack the decision-making capacity to negotiate a credible end to the conflict. The officials who remain may not know what their government is willing to concede. That’s a useful outcome for degrading Iran’s retaliatory coordination — but a serious obstacle if the endgame requires a functioning interlocutor on the other side of the table.
Trump says the war could be over in two to three weeks. He has an April 6 deadline on the strait that he’s already signaling he won’t enforce. He’s threatening Kharg Island while telling allies to go take Hormuz themselves. What he hasn’t said — and what the Journal’s reporting makes plain — is that he’s willing to declare victory in a war that leaves the world’s most consequential maritime chokepoint in the hands of a country he just spent a month bombing. That’s not an exit strategy. It’s an abdication dressed as one.