The Strait of Hormuz has become the central strategic battleground of what some analysts now call the third Gulf War. More than two weeks after US and Israeli surprise airstrikes on 28 February 2026 that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and numerous officials, the narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil normally flows remains closed to commercial traffic. What began as a military conflict between governments has crystallised into a test of whether any coalition of naval powers can force passage through waters controlled by a determined adversary with little left to lose.
The strategic calculus here involves several competing considerations. Trump announced that "many countries, especially those who are affected by Iran's attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending war ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe," specifically hoping that China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others affected by this artificial constraint, will send ships to the area. Yet none of those countries gave any immediate indication they would do so. This reluctance reveals a deeper truth about coercive diplomacy in the twenty-first century: nations will not commit naval assets to a cause unless their own security or economic survival is at stake. For most of the world, the disruption is economically painful but not existentially threatening. For Australia, the vulnerability is more acute.
What often goes unmentioned in the headlines is the layering of Australia's fuel insecurity. Following US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran has claimed the Strait of Hormuz is closed and warned that ships attempting to transit risk attack. The narrow channel between Iran and Oman normally carries around one-fifth of global oil and gas supply. But the disruption does not stop there. Even if Middle Eastern crude can eventually be rerouted elsewhere, the refined fuel Australia imports must still pass through the narrow maritime channels of Southeast Asia before reaching Australian ports; these Indonesian straits carry roughly 83 per cent of maritime imports and around 90 per cent of exports. In other words, the closure of Hormuz is only the first vulnerability in a chain extending from the Persian Gulf to the Indonesian archipelago.
The immediate military picture appears favourable to the US-led coalition. As of 3 March, at least 17 Iranian ships were destroyed, with a report that "there's not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman". Yet this asymmetric situation masks a fundamental problem of naval strategy in confined waters. The Strait of Hormuz will re-open only with the consent of the Iranian government; no amount of US naval power can either force passage or safeguard transit. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps possesses shore-based missiles and drones and fast attack craft, surface drones, mini-submarines and mines; apart from the 20 Ghadir class mini-submarines (remaining number unknown) all these threats number in the thousands. More fundamentally, Iran's task is not militarily taxing; it needs only to target the tankers with little accuracy, and just a few hits on a few tankers are enough to force mercantile insurers to bail out. This is sea denial, not sea control. Military history offers a relevant precedent: the Gallipoli campaign was attempted in 1915 because the most powerful navies of the day had failed to force the narrow Dardanelles, whose shores were controlled by Ottoman forces; even 18 battleships including the 381-mm guns of HMS Queen Elizabeth failed to sufficiently suppress defensive artillery, and the combination of basic artillery and naval mines inflicted such damage on the world's most advanced navy that they had to retire.
From Canberra's perspective, the implications are threefold. First, Australia must plan for extended supply disruption rather than assume swift restoration of normalcy. Rather than treating fuel security purely as a stockpiling problem, Australia should think about distributed fuel resilience, including larger northern storage facilities, greater redundancy in import terminals and expanded capacity to move fuel across the continent during disruption, plus accelerating diversification through alternative fuels, synthetic fuels and defence-grade energy systems. Second, the strategic calculus suggests that even successful escort operations would be limited and unsustainable. When the US Navy escorts ships, the interceptor cells and anti-missile gun magazines on US destroyers and frigates will empty more rapidly and expensively than Iranian arsenals. Third, the crisis reveals that Australia's fuel security depends on a chain of maritime chokepoints; disruption at any point reduces the margin for error dramatically.
The escalation trajectory remains uncertain. The United States-Israel war on Iran, now in its third week, continues to escalate after US forces struck military targets on Kharg Island, the critical hub through which most of Iran's crude exports pass. Trump said Washington deliberately spared the island's oil infrastructure but warned that it could be attacked if Iran interferes with shipping through the Strait. Yet Tehran has warned that any attack on its energy facilities would trigger retaliation against regional oil infrastructure and US-aligned assets, raising fears of a wider energy and security crisis across the Gulf. This cycle of threat and counter-threat reflects a fundamental mismatch in strategic objectives: the US seeks to restore passage; Iran seeks to impose costs on an adversary that has already dealt it devastating military blows.
Historical precedent suggests caution in predicting outcomes. The conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States has escalated progressively over two decades. The direct conflict between the US and Iran began in January 2020 when President Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, and tensions further escalated following the October 7 attacks on Israel and the start of the Gaza war in 2023, during which Israel weakened Iranian-backed militias across the Middle East. Each cycle of escalation has been followed by a period of relative calm, then renewed tension. Whether this cycle repeats depends on factors beyond military control: Iran's internal political stability under new leadership, regional diplomatic initiatives, and the sustainability of American will to maintain operations in contested waters where technological superiority offers no decisive advantage.
Australia's strategic interest lies not in choosing sides, but in understanding that this crisis will not be resolved by naval power alone. The closure of the Strait represents a moment of strategic clarity: fuel security requires not just global supply chains but resilient, distributed infrastructure capable of absorbing shocks to critical chokepoints. The government should treat this not as a temporary disruption but as a structural feature of the emerging strategic environment.