Samia Nakul
DUBAI, March 13 (Reuters) – Long before the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the Islamic Republic had already devised its own weapons: seizing the world’s main oil lifeline to offset its enemies’ military advantages, three regional sources familiar with Iran’s plans said.
For decades, Iran has said it would restrict tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint where its adversaries are most vulnerable, because disruption there would immediately ripple through global energy markets if it got caught in a confrontation.
With the Gulf’s main export artery in its crosshairs, Tehran has transformed the region’s biggest economic asset into its most powerful deterrent, sources said.
About a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through the vital strait, which Iran, on its northern coast, has now effectively closed. Traffic through the strait has dropped by 97% since the war against Iran began on February 28, according to United Nations data.
Iran has used similar tactics before. During the “tanker war” of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict, attacks on ships turned the gulf into one of the world’s most dangerous waterways, forcing Washington to escort tankers through the strait.
But Iran now has more powerful tools, including an army of cheap missiles and drones, that can threaten shipping in the wider region. This month’s attacks show how quickly Tehran can disrupt traffic in the strait without flooding the country with mines.
VAEZ says Trump would be ‘first to blink’ if global economy was hijacked
Ali Vaez, Iran program director at the International Crisis Group, said: “Iran’s weaponry is at a disadvantage – it is impossible to defeat them in a direct confrontation.” After the 12-day war last June, Tehran expected further US and Israeli attacks and therefore studied how to prolong the conflict “in time and space.”
“If Iran hijacks the global economy, Trump will be the first to blink,” Vaez added.
Regional sources, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was ready for a showdown with Israel and Washington.
The IRGC’s plan, aimed at protecting Iran’s 47-year-long rule by vehemently anti-Western Islamic clerics, was launched on February 28 after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the conflict.
Sources say the core of the strategy is recognition of Iran’s military constraints on superior forces. Instead, Tehran’s planners seek to put pressure on oil flows while conducting asymmetric attacks on U.S. assets stationed in the region.
Iran turns armed confrontation into economic shock
The strategy aims to apply domestic and foreign economic pressure on President Donald Trump to stop the war.
“This is a form of asymmetric warfare par excellence, in which Iran achieves large, even global, impact with a small number of attacks and pays a heavy price,” said Michael Eisenstat of the Washington Institute.
“The goal is to inflict economic pain, further weaken U.S. support for the war, and increase pressure on Washington to end the war.”
Rather than concentrating its forces on one battlefield, Tehran has dispersed its operations through waves of low-cost missile and drone strikes across the Gulf, which it once outsourced to Iranian-allied forces in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.
The approach reflects a doctrine developed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over decades, the sources said, based on the assumption that a more powerful enemy would seek to destroy Iran’s leadership and command structure at the outset of any war.
They say the Guard is learning lessons from years of conflict with the U.S. shadow. But this time, Tehran is no longer relying primarily on the regional proxies that once formed its forward defense line, but is instead executing its own playbook.
VAEZ says U.S. approach smacks of “wishful thinking”
Ali Vaez said the United States entered the war unprepared and was driven by “a lot of wishful thinking rather than a lot of thoughtful strategy.”
He said Washington failed to foresee drone attacks on Gulf states, disruption of shipping lanes or the need to evacuate citizens, shortcomings he said reflected a failure to learn from the risks of drones in modern warfare.
By contrast, Iran’s decentralized “mosaic” doctrine—spreading command and control to withstand beheadings—remains in place under a single coordinating center. Even after Khamenei’s death, two sources said the speaker of parliament, former Guards commander Mohammad Bakr Qalibaf, and the head of Iran’s National Security Council Ali Larijani continued to direct the war effort from Tehran.
Vaez believes that although the United States can significantly weaken Iran, completely defeating Iran would require a land invasion of up to 1 million troops in harsh terrain, but Washington has shown that “it has no appetite” for such a commitment.
Trump, who once promised to distance the United States from “stupid” military interventions, is now pursuing what many experts see as an endless war of options that could be the largest military campaign since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Vaez said Iran’s current goal is survival. Beyond that, its broader goal is to force Washington to admit that coercion, whether through military force, economic pressure or diplomatic isolation, will not work.
Whether such lessons have been learned remains uncertain. But by weaponizing the world’s most critical energy corridor and extending the battlefield beyond Iran’s borders, Tehran is confident it can outlast a far more powerful enemy.
(Reporting by Samia Nakuul; Editing by William McLean)
