Problem Statement
The current Persian Gulf War has cut off an artery of raw materials by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Commodities such as oil, fuel, liquified natural gas, fertilizer, cooking gas, and plastics have seen disruption.
Important questions are:
- How big is the hole to fill for crude oil?
- What transportation alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz exist?
- Where can additional supply come from?
- How flexible is demand?
- What realistic military options exist to reopen the waterway?
Adding Up the Shortage
Roughly 15 million barrels per day of crude oil and 5 million barrels per day of crude products travel through the Strait of Hormuz under business-as-usual conditions. There are different definitions of what constitutes crude oil, but I'll stick to the true black stuff that is around 85 million barrels per day. The world is losing ~20% of supply.
Of the crude products traversing the strait, around 3.5 million barrels per day are more easily substitutable products like naptha, fuel oil, or liquid petroleum gases. These products will be painful to replace, but their impact on the global economy is more localized, and there are more options to manage the shortage. For instance, a lot of liquid petroleum gases (propane, butane) go to India for cooking. Higher prices will cause pain for India's poor, but won't impact global commerce like a diesel shortage does. Indians will have to cook with more biomass or electricity (India has massively expanded grid access over the last decade). Naphtha is a feedstock for plastics and other products. Metals can fill in for plastic. Packaging can use plastic more efficiently, such as moving away from single-serve containers. Biomass for heating can replace fuel oil in many places that use it. Ships can conserve fuel oil with slow steaming.
A further point is that some products will be harder to replace. Persian Gulf oil is heavier than many potential replacements, meaning the Persian Gulf oil yields more diesel than gasoline, and the balance of product exports is diesel and jet fuel. Refineries can shift some runs towards diesel and jet fuel, within limits, but not enough to make up the deficit.
Under these assumptions, the total to worry about is 16.5 million barrels per day, and diesel/jet fuel needs special attention.
Bypassing the Strait
A crisis like this has long been a fear. Several key producers have built alternatives as a result:
- Saudi Arabia has a pipeline to the Red Sea with ~5 million barrels per day of pre-crisis spare capacity.
- The United Arab Emirates has a pipeline to the Gulf of Oman with ~1 million barrels per day of pre-crisis spare capacity.
- Iraq has a pipeline to Turkey with 1.5 million barrels per day of pre-crisis spare capacity that it could link to its southern oil fields.
Additionally, the strait isn't completely closed. Iran is shipping ~2 million barrels per day, and the US is likely to allow them to keep doing this to keep that supply alive and also to incentivize them not to mine the strait.
If we add that up, then there are 8 million barrels per day of production available in the near term. Iran, allowing a few exceptions, like Chinese-flagged ships, would go a long way toward further closing the gap.
Countries could also build more pipelines! Possibly even temporary ones. Iraq could link up its northern pipeline to its southern oilfields.
Another near-term angle is that the countries in the Gulf have aspirations to connect the region with rail and expand beyond the current local nature of rail lines. A truly regional, double-tracked rail line could move Persian Gulf oil (and other commodities) and would have peacetime benefits.
The already existing bypass capacity softens the blow. Many countries in the region should consider expanding it further.
Boosting Alternative Supply
The most obvious band-aid is in strategic petroleum reserves. There are 1-2 billion barrels available, and let's assume their discharge rate is 4 million barrels per day. That lasts roughly a year.
Next up is a new supply from other oil-producing countries. In mildly stimulative times, the US has been able to add ~1 million barrels per day of production per year. The world could add 2-4 million net barrels per day per year outside of the Persian Gulf under such duress, depending on the strength of the price signal. US shale might not be able to sustain the increase forever, but a few years is likely enough.
Demand Reduction
In past oil shocks, most substitution came from natural gas, electricity, and coal replacing oil usage in power generation, home heating, or industrial usage. Substitution was more challenging in transportation and was mostly limited to efficiency improvements, which ran into diminishing returns. Many adjustments came simply from throttling economic growth.
Today, there are many more options for substitution, and some are on the verge of being transformational.
Diesel/Jet Fuel
Refineries have more flexibility in substituting between diesel and jet fuel than most products, so it makes sense to tackle them as one. Diesel is close to 30 million barrels per day, while jet fuel is around 8 million barrels per day. The main levers for demand reduction are:
-
Freight Mode Shifting
Semi-trucks consume most diesel, roughly 17 million barrels per day. Competing modes, such as intermodal rail, barges, or ships, tend to be slower but are more fuel efficient. Shifting even 10%-20% of ton-miles can reduce usage by millions of barrels per day.
-
Electric and CNG Trucks
Battery-electric trucks are just beginning to scale. Projected 2026 sales are ~500,000 units. That production can reduce fuel demand by half a million barrels per day. Sales could be higher if there is spare capacity in China.
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) trucks have also grown, mostly in China, and could subtract another 0.25 million barrels per day this year.
The highest utilization portion of the truck fleet turns over every few years, and the numbers required are a fraction of passenger cars, so the reduction potential over 2-4 years is paradigm-shifting. Net diesel usage could fall 5 to 8 million barrels per day if the market signals electric and CNG truck makers to expand output.
-
Random Users
Passenger cars and diesel generators consume several million barrels of diesel daily.
Diesel cars should be under the most pressure to be substituted.
A few days of normal global solar panel installations could replace diesel generators. In practice, diesel-powered microgrids can save money by adding supplemental solar PV and batteries to reduce their fuel consumption.
-
Flying Less
Jet fuel is the hardest to substitute. Flying less is the obvious solution. If diesel reduction can overperform, it will allow refiners to make a higher proportion of jet fuel.
Heavy Fuel Oil
Heavy fuel oil usage is ~5 million barrels per day, with one-third used for heating and two-thirds for ships.
Electric heat pumps, propane (in the US), or wood are heating alternatives (besides turning down the thermostat).
Ships can slow steam because fuel usage decreases much faster than speed. Fuel usage can fall without sacrificing throughput if more ships are available. The world is good at building ships!
Gasoline
Global gasoline usage is nearly 30 million barrels per day. There are several options to replace or reduce its usage.
-
Telecommuting
Similar to COVID, video calls can knock out some commuting. 1-2 million barrels per day of gasoline would be aggressive, representing a fifth to a quarter of global commuting miles.
-
Electric Vehicles
The status quo of new electric passenger cars reduces oil demand by ~0.35 million barrels per day, with that number growing rapidly each year.
The existing fleet's utilization can increase with more in-household substitution or commercial services such as rideshare apps. Doubling the existing EV fleet's utilization would knock out 1 million barrels per day of demand.
China also likely has excess EV production capacity that could further decrease gasoline demand.
-
Autonomous Electric Vehicles
We are nearing the age of autonomous vehicles, and virtually all proposed and active models are electric. These vehicles can achieve 5 times the utilization of regular EVs. The impact can quickly exceed 1 million barrels per day of reduction per year, with the impact growing rapidly. Similar to electric trucks, the 2-4 year cumulative reduction can exceed 5 million barrels per day.
-
Drone Delivery
Drone delivery is tiny today but has amazing growth potential. 100-pound drones can effectively replace tens of thousands of pounds worth of cars doing food and grocery runs. These drones can quickly scale into millions of units per year with relatively basic manufacturing and logistics systems.
The opportunity size is similar to telecommuting, where shifting ~20% of errands can eliminate more than 1 million barrels per day of demand.
-
Forgoing Activity
A surprisingly large portion of fuel burn is for fun. Visiting friends, vacations, attending youth sports, or a range of other activities. In the short term, that might decrease.
Chemical Precursors
Almost all net oil demand growth since 2019 is from the Chinese petrochemical sector. The country has invested in coal-to-chemicals as an alternative, and it can ramp further. Gas feedstocks can do the same elsewhere. The near-term impact could be half a million barrels per day. The only limit is the capacity the market wants to build.
Certain plastics and polymers will have tighter supply than others, but there is a range of options to adjust packaging or use metals to produce products.
The Scorecard
What could the balance look like? These numbers are my guess with supply alternatives coming closer to potential than demand reduction.
Today
-16.5 Deficit
+8 Bypass
+4 Strategic Reserves
+1.5 Telecommuting
+1.25 New EVs and increased utilization
+1 Freight mode shifting and electric/CNG trucks
+0.5 Coal-gas-to-chemical
--
-0.25 Deficit
Substitution and alternatives can limit pure demand destruction in the best-case scenarios. There will also be temporary shortages of specific products or in certain locations, even if global supply and demand balance.
One to Two Years
-16.5 Deficit
+9.5 Bypass
+3 Non-Persian Gulf Production
+0.5 Telecommuting
+3 New EVs, trucks, and increased utilization
+0.5 Autonomous EVs
+1 Coal-gas-to-chemical
+0.5 Drone Delivery
--
+1.5 Surplus
After 1-2 years, it might be possible to dial back telecommuting and other hardships. The impact from drones, EVs, trucks, and autonomous EVs can be substantial in the following years as production ramps up, making up for other sources that don't materialize.
Opening the Strait
It would be best of all for the global economy if traffic through the Strait and the Gulf returned to normal without conflict. But it is still important to consider the military options.
The primary threats are anti-ship missiles/drones, mines (and minelayers), unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), and small attack craft.
First, to state the obvious, the US Navy does not have a ship force structure optimized to escort commercial ships through such a constrained and high-threat environment. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) should step up, but that program has been a failure, and no one seems to be in a hurry to deploy them in such an environment. The next logical ship is the Burke-class destroyers, but they have many other jobs and cost billions of dollars each. Only so many can be spared or risked. Any action should minimize the need for the "Blue Water" Navy.
In fairness, there may not be any ship that is a logical choice. A .50 caliber machine gun can dispatch every threat except for high-speed missiles. The entire purpose of many enemy systems is to be difficult for large, less nimble assets to counter.
We can look back to the 1980s for guidance when Iran threatened shipping and the US Navy responded. Detached scout helicopters countered the small boat and minelayer threat by ruthlessly hunting them, especially at night. The missiles were less sophisticated than today, but still required multi-layer protection. The Navy limited observation of convoys, provided air cover to thwart planes or launchers before they fired, destroyed logistics and support facilities, and finally had escort ships. Intercepting or avoiding missiles was not ideal, and preventing their launch was more important.
The overall strategy should be similar today.
Light, mobile forces can neutralize USVs, drones, and small boats. Whatever platform fills the gap must be fast and numerous enough to provide full coverage for threats that require short response times. The OH-58 Kiowa Helicopter of the 1980s had >2300 produced, weighed only 2 tons empty, and could cruise at 130 mph. A Reaper drone of today has only 10% of the units produced and has a much wider mission set that competes with maritime patrol. It is also twice as expensive as the Kiowa in inflation-adjusted dollars. Instead, the US military should utilize cheaper, smaller drones that can saturate the Persian Gulf. There are new-age defense startups that see this as one of their primary missions, and it's time for them to prove they aren't just playing "house." As a stopgap, the US is already deploying F-16s and E-2 radar aircraft for patrol missions, along with A-10s.
There is significantly more operational space after neutralizing the "small" threats. The primary concern becomes missiles. The update from the 1980s example is that it is easier for both sides to see each other and hit any object, whether that be a launcher, missile, or ship. Compared to the 1980s, the US needs to spend more effort hunting launchers and disrupting communications or timing. Given that not many guided missile destroyers will be available, avoiding well-aimed launches is key.
A script might be: Ruthlessly attack known assets and surging launcher-hunting assets ahead of a convoy. Combat air patrols to provide top air cover to handle anything that isn't a ballistic missile. The speed and direction of convoys should vary to obscure the exact time the convoy will be in the worst "kill boxes." And Iranian observation needs to be limited as much as possible. Land-based air defense systems can cover ports and near-shore sea lanes.
The Iranians show limited ability to coordinate more than a few launches at a time (for now) and have dwindling launcher assets. Disrupting their coordination means they can only launch several missiles at any one convoy. And their assets are at the highest risk if they fire on convoys under surged opposition air cover. Like in the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII, absolute hits on any convoy should stay constant, but the percentage of ships hit should go down for large convoys.
Another aspect to avoid is boots on the ground for any length of time. Not only might ground troops be difficult to sustain, but static forces in key points like the Strait of Hormuz or Kharg Island will be sitting ducks for small drone attacks. Iranian militias have already attacked US bases in Iraq with fiber optic drones, probably from a country that starts with "R" and ends with "ussia," which have excellent camera feed quality and are immune to electronic warfare (the US's primary small drone defense). Watching the last moments and facial expressions of dozens or hundreds of America's sons and daughters through an FPV camera feed will be horrifying for most Americans, especially when the war has little political backing.
A final point is that the US needs to learn to handle the maritime threat outside this conflict. There are many strategic maritime choke points where bad actors can currently inflict disproportionate losses to the global economy with this toolset.
An All of the Above Strategy
There is no silver bullet for the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz. But the portfolio of responses can significantly reduce the impact and risk to the global economy. GCC countries need bypasses and other transportation infrastructure to grow. EVs, autonomous vehicles, electric/CNG trucks, and drone delivery should be deregulated and unleashed. Alternative oil supply has growth potential, especially US shale. Militaries need to figure out how to protect shipping against new-age threats.
The most important thread holding this together is that markets be allowed to function. A ham-fisted attempt at controlling supply and demand could worsen the situation by limiting production growth and substitution.
The global economy is remarkably resilient when it is free to adjust. The leading country unintentionally cut off ~20% of one of the key global commodities. And yet! The problem should be resolved within a few years unless there is more extreme self-destructive behavior. New technology paired with rising global incomes and wealth is a powerful combination.
Solving the Strait of Hormuz Blockage
2026 March 28 Twitter Substack See all postsMarkets ensure the disruption can't last more than 1-2 years.
Problem Statement
The current Persian Gulf War has cut off an artery of raw materials by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Commodities such as oil, fuel, liquified natural gas, fertilizer, cooking gas, and plastics have seen disruption.
Important questions are:
Adding Up the Shortage
Roughly 15 million barrels per day of crude oil and 5 million barrels per day of crude products travel through the Strait of Hormuz under business-as-usual conditions. There are different definitions of what constitutes crude oil, but I'll stick to the true black stuff that is around 85 million barrels per day. The world is losing ~20% of supply.
Of the crude products traversing the strait, around 3.5 million barrels per day are more easily substitutable products like naptha, fuel oil, or liquid petroleum gases. These products will be painful to replace, but their impact on the global economy is more localized, and there are more options to manage the shortage. For instance, a lot of liquid petroleum gases (propane, butane) go to India for cooking. Higher prices will cause pain for India's poor, but won't impact global commerce like a diesel shortage does. Indians will have to cook with more biomass or electricity (India has massively expanded grid access over the last decade). Naphtha is a feedstock for plastics and other products. Metals can fill in for plastic. Packaging can use plastic more efficiently, such as moving away from single-serve containers. Biomass for heating can replace fuel oil in many places that use it. Ships can conserve fuel oil with slow steaming.
A further point is that some products will be harder to replace. Persian Gulf oil is heavier than many potential replacements, meaning the Persian Gulf oil yields more diesel than gasoline, and the balance of product exports is diesel and jet fuel. Refineries can shift some runs towards diesel and jet fuel, within limits, but not enough to make up the deficit.
Under these assumptions, the total to worry about is 16.5 million barrels per day, and diesel/jet fuel needs special attention.
Bypassing the Strait
A crisis like this has long been a fear. Several key producers have built alternatives as a result:
Additionally, the strait isn't completely closed. Iran is shipping ~2 million barrels per day, and the US is likely to allow them to keep doing this to keep that supply alive and also to incentivize them not to mine the strait.
If we add that up, then there are 8 million barrels per day of production available in the near term. Iran, allowing a few exceptions, like Chinese-flagged ships, would go a long way toward further closing the gap.
Countries could also build more pipelines! Possibly even temporary ones. Iraq could link up its northern pipeline to its southern oilfields.
Another near-term angle is that the countries in the Gulf have aspirations to connect the region with rail and expand beyond the current local nature of rail lines. A truly regional, double-tracked rail line could move Persian Gulf oil (and other commodities) and would have peacetime benefits.
The already existing bypass capacity softens the blow. Many countries in the region should consider expanding it further.
Boosting Alternative Supply
The most obvious band-aid is in strategic petroleum reserves. There are 1-2 billion barrels available, and let's assume their discharge rate is 4 million barrels per day. That lasts roughly a year.
Next up is a new supply from other oil-producing countries. In mildly stimulative times, the US has been able to add ~1 million barrels per day of production per year. The world could add 2-4 million net barrels per day per year outside of the Persian Gulf under such duress, depending on the strength of the price signal. US shale might not be able to sustain the increase forever, but a few years is likely enough.
Demand Reduction
In past oil shocks, most substitution came from natural gas, electricity, and coal replacing oil usage in power generation, home heating, or industrial usage. Substitution was more challenging in transportation and was mostly limited to efficiency improvements, which ran into diminishing returns. Many adjustments came simply from throttling economic growth.
Today, there are many more options for substitution, and some are on the verge of being transformational.
Diesel/Jet Fuel
Refineries have more flexibility in substituting between diesel and jet fuel than most products, so it makes sense to tackle them as one. Diesel is close to 30 million barrels per day, while jet fuel is around 8 million barrels per day. The main levers for demand reduction are:
Freight Mode Shifting
Semi-trucks consume most diesel, roughly 17 million barrels per day. Competing modes, such as intermodal rail, barges, or ships, tend to be slower but are more fuel efficient. Shifting even 10%-20% of ton-miles can reduce usage by millions of barrels per day.
Electric and CNG Trucks
Battery-electric trucks are just beginning to scale. Projected 2026 sales are ~500,000 units. That production can reduce fuel demand by half a million barrels per day. Sales could be higher if there is spare capacity in China.
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) trucks have also grown, mostly in China, and could subtract another 0.25 million barrels per day this year.
The highest utilization portion of the truck fleet turns over every few years, and the numbers required are a fraction of passenger cars, so the reduction potential over 2-4 years is paradigm-shifting. Net diesel usage could fall 5 to 8 million barrels per day if the market signals electric and CNG truck makers to expand output.
Random Users
Passenger cars and diesel generators consume several million barrels of diesel daily. Diesel cars should be under the most pressure to be substituted.
A few days of normal global solar panel installations could replace diesel generators. In practice, diesel-powered microgrids can save money by adding supplemental solar PV and batteries to reduce their fuel consumption.
Flying Less
Jet fuel is the hardest to substitute. Flying less is the obvious solution. If diesel reduction can overperform, it will allow refiners to make a higher proportion of jet fuel.
Heavy Fuel Oil
Heavy fuel oil usage is ~5 million barrels per day, with one-third used for heating and two-thirds for ships.
Electric heat pumps, propane (in the US), or wood are heating alternatives (besides turning down the thermostat).
Ships can slow steam because fuel usage decreases much faster than speed. Fuel usage can fall without sacrificing throughput if more ships are available. The world is good at building ships!
Gasoline
Global gasoline usage is nearly 30 million barrels per day. There are several options to replace or reduce its usage.
Telecommuting
Similar to COVID, video calls can knock out some commuting. 1-2 million barrels per day of gasoline would be aggressive, representing a fifth to a quarter of global commuting miles.
Electric Vehicles
The status quo of new electric passenger cars reduces oil demand by ~0.35 million barrels per day, with that number growing rapidly each year.
The existing fleet's utilization can increase with more in-household substitution or commercial services such as rideshare apps. Doubling the existing EV fleet's utilization would knock out 1 million barrels per day of demand.
China also likely has excess EV production capacity that could further decrease gasoline demand.
Autonomous Electric Vehicles
We are nearing the age of autonomous vehicles, and virtually all proposed and active models are electric. These vehicles can achieve 5 times the utilization of regular EVs. The impact can quickly exceed 1 million barrels per day of reduction per year, with the impact growing rapidly. Similar to electric trucks, the 2-4 year cumulative reduction can exceed 5 million barrels per day.
Drone Delivery
Drone delivery is tiny today but has amazing growth potential. 100-pound drones can effectively replace tens of thousands of pounds worth of cars doing food and grocery runs. These drones can quickly scale into millions of units per year with relatively basic manufacturing and logistics systems.
The opportunity size is similar to telecommuting, where shifting ~20% of errands can eliminate more than 1 million barrels per day of demand.
Forgoing Activity
A surprisingly large portion of fuel burn is for fun. Visiting friends, vacations, attending youth sports, or a range of other activities. In the short term, that might decrease.
Chemical Precursors
Almost all net oil demand growth since 2019 is from the Chinese petrochemical sector. The country has invested in coal-to-chemicals as an alternative, and it can ramp further. Gas feedstocks can do the same elsewhere. The near-term impact could be half a million barrels per day. The only limit is the capacity the market wants to build.
Certain plastics and polymers will have tighter supply than others, but there is a range of options to adjust packaging or use metals to produce products.
The Scorecard
What could the balance look like? These numbers are my guess with supply alternatives coming closer to potential than demand reduction.
Today
-16.5 Deficit
+8 Bypass
+4 Strategic Reserves
+1.5 Telecommuting
+1.25 New EVs and increased utilization
+1 Freight mode shifting and electric/CNG trucks
+0.5 Coal-gas-to-chemical
--
-0.25 Deficit
Substitution and alternatives can limit pure demand destruction in the best-case scenarios. There will also be temporary shortages of specific products or in certain locations, even if global supply and demand balance.
One to Two Years
-16.5 Deficit
+9.5 Bypass
+3 Non-Persian Gulf Production
+0.5 Telecommuting
+3 New EVs, trucks, and increased utilization
+0.5 Autonomous EVs
+1 Coal-gas-to-chemical
+0.5 Drone Delivery
--
+1.5 Surplus
After 1-2 years, it might be possible to dial back telecommuting and other hardships. The impact from drones, EVs, trucks, and autonomous EVs can be substantial in the following years as production ramps up, making up for other sources that don't materialize.
Opening the Strait
It would be best of all for the global economy if traffic through the Strait and the Gulf returned to normal without conflict. But it is still important to consider the military options.
The primary threats are anti-ship missiles/drones, mines (and minelayers), unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), and small attack craft.
First, to state the obvious, the US Navy does not have a ship force structure optimized to escort commercial ships through such a constrained and high-threat environment. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) should step up, but that program has been a failure, and no one seems to be in a hurry to deploy them in such an environment. The next logical ship is the Burke-class destroyers, but they have many other jobs and cost billions of dollars each. Only so many can be spared or risked. Any action should minimize the need for the "Blue Water" Navy.
In fairness, there may not be any ship that is a logical choice. A .50 caliber machine gun can dispatch every threat except for high-speed missiles. The entire purpose of many enemy systems is to be difficult for large, less nimble assets to counter.
We can look back to the 1980s for guidance when Iran threatened shipping and the US Navy responded. Detached scout helicopters countered the small boat and minelayer threat by ruthlessly hunting them, especially at night. The missiles were less sophisticated than today, but still required multi-layer protection. The Navy limited observation of convoys, provided air cover to thwart planes or launchers before they fired, destroyed logistics and support facilities, and finally had escort ships. Intercepting or avoiding missiles was not ideal, and preventing their launch was more important.
The overall strategy should be similar today.
Light, mobile forces can neutralize USVs, drones, and small boats. Whatever platform fills the gap must be fast and numerous enough to provide full coverage for threats that require short response times. The OH-58 Kiowa Helicopter of the 1980s had >2300 produced, weighed only 2 tons empty, and could cruise at 130 mph. A Reaper drone of today has only 10% of the units produced and has a much wider mission set that competes with maritime patrol. It is also twice as expensive as the Kiowa in inflation-adjusted dollars. Instead, the US military should utilize cheaper, smaller drones that can saturate the Persian Gulf. There are new-age defense startups that see this as one of their primary missions, and it's time for them to prove they aren't just playing "house." As a stopgap, the US is already deploying F-16s and E-2 radar aircraft for patrol missions, along with A-10s.
There is significantly more operational space after neutralizing the "small" threats. The primary concern becomes missiles. The update from the 1980s example is that it is easier for both sides to see each other and hit any object, whether that be a launcher, missile, or ship. Compared to the 1980s, the US needs to spend more effort hunting launchers and disrupting communications or timing. Given that not many guided missile destroyers will be available, avoiding well-aimed launches is key.
A script might be: Ruthlessly attack known assets and surging launcher-hunting assets ahead of a convoy. Combat air patrols to provide top air cover to handle anything that isn't a ballistic missile. The speed and direction of convoys should vary to obscure the exact time the convoy will be in the worst "kill boxes." And Iranian observation needs to be limited as much as possible. Land-based air defense systems can cover ports and near-shore sea lanes.
The Iranians show limited ability to coordinate more than a few launches at a time (for now) and have dwindling launcher assets. Disrupting their coordination means they can only launch several missiles at any one convoy. And their assets are at the highest risk if they fire on convoys under surged opposition air cover. Like in the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII, absolute hits on any convoy should stay constant, but the percentage of ships hit should go down for large convoys.
Another aspect to avoid is boots on the ground for any length of time. Not only might ground troops be difficult to sustain, but static forces in key points like the Strait of Hormuz or Kharg Island will be sitting ducks for small drone attacks. Iranian militias have already attacked US bases in Iraq with fiber optic drones, probably from a country that starts with "R" and ends with "ussia," which have excellent camera feed quality and are immune to electronic warfare (the US's primary small drone defense). Watching the last moments and facial expressions of dozens or hundreds of America's sons and daughters through an FPV camera feed will be horrifying for most Americans, especially when the war has little political backing.
A final point is that the US needs to learn to handle the maritime threat outside this conflict. There are many strategic maritime choke points where bad actors can currently inflict disproportionate losses to the global economy with this toolset.
An All of the Above Strategy
There is no silver bullet for the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz. But the portfolio of responses can significantly reduce the impact and risk to the global economy. GCC countries need bypasses and other transportation infrastructure to grow. EVs, autonomous vehicles, electric/CNG trucks, and drone delivery should be deregulated and unleashed. Alternative oil supply has growth potential, especially US shale. Militaries need to figure out how to protect shipping against new-age threats.
The most important thread holding this together is that markets be allowed to function. A ham-fisted attempt at controlling supply and demand could worsen the situation by limiting production growth and substitution.
The global economy is remarkably resilient when it is free to adjust. The leading country unintentionally cut off ~20% of one of the key global commodities. And yet! The problem should be resolved within a few years unless there is more extreme self-destructive behavior. New technology paired with rising global incomes and wealth is a powerful combination.