Trump Threatens Repeat Bombing of Iran’s Kharg Island, Seeks Allied Warships for Hormuz

Shelling Kharg recalls the Iran-Iraq “Tanker War” of 1984-88, when repeated assaults on the island and Operation Earnest Will drew the U.S. Navy into convoy duty. Trump’s public appeal for a new escort coalition reprises that playbook but in a far more energy-hungry, multipolar world where Asian importers, not NATO states, are the principal stakeholders. Meanwhile, low-cost drones striking Fujairah show the asymmetric evolution of commerce raiding—akin to German U-boats in 1917 but now airborne, cheap and deniable. This episode underscores two longer arcs: the fragility of single-point oil chokepoints that have shaped Gulf politics for half a century, and the eroding monopoly of state navies over sea-lane security. Whether these strikes resolve or prolong the war, they nudge producers and consumers toward diversification of routes and fuels—a trend that, over a 100-year horizon, could make Hormuz brinkmanship look like the dying convulsions of the oil era rather than its defining future.