Closing the Straits, Escalation Ladders & Targeting Energy Infrastructure 19 MAR Update

FULL Context in the Back:

An escalation ladder has rungs, going up the rung is an escalation to another set of targets or activities that expand or worsen the conflict.

Secretary Hegseth and President Trump mistook the escalation ladder as a trophy stand and Netanyahu didn’t think Iranians could climb. Their Putin-esque error in miscalculation was that they could conduct regime decapitation strikes, collapsing the regime, step up on the escalation stool, declare victory and accept a shared Noble Peace Prize. Iran’s retaliation was not symbolic however and it turns out the escalation step stool was a full ladder. Iran immediately launched widespread barrages against not just military targets of the US and its allies, but civilian and infrastructure as well. Then two of Iran’s three regional proxies activated, with Hezbollah launching attacks south into Israeli from Lebanon and Iranian aligned Shia PMF launching attacks at US bases in Iraq. Notably, the Houthis did not activate yet. (#SpoilerAlert!)

That was the state of play in the first week. Over the last two weeks, Iran stepped up two major escalation rungs. They targeted tankers in the Gulf and shut down the Strait of Hormuz. This threatened the oil exports, but not necessarily the oil production infrastructure itself. This unlocked the next three escalation rungs which are attacks on 1) oil infrastructure, 2) water desalination, and a 3) efforts to reopen the Straits of Hormuz that may range from naval actions only to a full ground invasion of Hormozgan Province I’ll handle them in order.

Both sides had hit storage tanks here and there – but neither had really targeted the big fat targets of oil wells, refinery, production, and shipping ports. These are sprawling areas with sophisticated machinery and represent hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of investment regionally over decades. Additionally, although the loss of a tanker may represent several hundred million dollars in assets (the cost of the tanker plus the cost of its oil) the world has lots of tankers and they are mobile. Lose one, and you can rebuild it somewhere else while sending another tanker to the Gulf to take its place. Lose the oil and natural gas or LNG infrastructure – and you may be out of production, unable to refine, or unable to ship for the years it takes to rebuild them.

Israel stepped on this rung yesterday by attacking an Iranian processing center at Asaluyeh directly across the Persian Gulf from Qatar.. Asaluyeh is the Iranian processing facility for a gas field in the Persian Gulf it splits with Qatar, known as the North & South Pars Fields. (Iran pulls from the north into Asaluyeh, Qatar from the south into Ras Laffan). The US had recently avoided stepping on this rung. In bombing Kargh Island (in the northeast of the Persian Gulf) US forces targeted military assets, but spared the oil shipping capabilities of Iran. Although Trump denies prior knowledge of the Israeli Asaluyeh Pars Field strikes, Israeli officials have indicated this strike was coordinated with the US

Iran almost immediately retaliated against Qatar sending barrages against processing facilities linked to the South Pars Field. But they also struck major oil and natural infrastructure in Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Some of these attacks

This is why Brent oil jumped over $10/bbl yesterday (and is still heading north) and WTC is closing in on $100/bbl. Each hit that gets through on these facilities is months or even years of downtime even after the conflict ends (which I still am comfortable is going to be going pretty strong at least through 12 APR if not much longer.) By way of example, the Iranian strikes on the Ras Laffan gas facilities are estimated this morning to have eliminated 17% of Qatar natural gas production for at least the next five years. Meaning if this rate of exchange keeps up, whether the Strait of Hormuz is reopened (see rung #3) will be a moot question because the effective productive capacity of the Gulf will already have been sufficiently damaged or destroyed, and be offline for longer, than the presumptive time Iran holds the Strait closed.

Although that’s the “BIG DEAL” from a global economic front. What may be being missed in the military analysis is not just that Iran retaliated stepping up the rung, but how. I watched this unfold live in ALJ updates. And it was only a couple of hours from the Israeli attack on the Asaluyeh to Iranian barrage alerts going up in the targeted countries. That implies either an existing actual, or facsimile regionally effective command and control (C2). This undermines the Hegseth/Trump/McBeth flex that that not only has the has eliminated Iranian C2, but anytime anyone in their leadership ‘picks up the phone’ there’s a JDAM waiting to take them out. Ryan McBeth even leans in further as an exemplar of this position by saying that the elimination of C2 would prevent Iran from effectively targeting its barrage strikes because, to paraphrase “someone has to approve the target and the launch.”

But yesterday, in its retaliation, Iranian military demonstrated that not only could they sense and recognize the attack on Asaluyeh as a major escalation, but rapidly redirect barrages from across the region to a new target set, stepping up the escalation ladder to meet Israeli within hours. This could mean one of two things. First, that despite all the bombings and decapitation strikes Iran remains an effective and capable C2. Or, as part of its mosaic warfare doctrine, they have pre-existing target lists with a simple rules criteria: if our oil fields are hit, hit their oil fields.

Why this matters is that it indicates an operational ability to adapt at scale to new developments. If the US tries to move into the Strait of Hormuz with this kind of C2 (real or facsimile) still in effect – it won’t be scattered resistance and randos shooting off barrages, but a coordinated barrage response. And that could be devastating to a naval foray into the Straits while still intact.

You can tell how bad this escalation turned out to be for US interests because of Trump’s TruthSocial meltdown last night. He treated Israel like the Proud Boys, telling them to stand-down and stand-to, indicating the IDF had struck out of ‘anger’ even while he was bending over backwards almost pleading to insist neither the US nor Qatar had nothing to do with it and could Iran please stop attacking those big fat juicy targets. He also threatened that if they continued attacking, he would authorize US strikes on Iran’s oil infrastructure. So, mixed messages. And of course it begs the question – who does Trump think he’s talking too? If he’s destroyed Iran’s C2, there’s no one left to pick up the phone for his calls to deescalate.

Up from the oil and gas production, refineries, processing, and shipping ports are desalination plants. Given its dry climate and high population growth in the last 30 years the region is littered with these desalination plants that turn salt water into usable water. Although it was reported Israeli hit an Iranian desalination plant early, it hasn’t happened again. But if either side decides to step up – either as a threat to get the opponent to stop attacking oil infrastructure, or an adjacent step to keep the conflict going, desalination plants are also big fat easy targets to hit that cost a bunch of money and take years to replace. The difference however is that Gulf states can live without oil for a bit – it’s much harder to live without potable water.

The third escalation rung on the horizon is attempts by the US to force reopen the Strait of Hormuz. There’s a lot of valid questioning as to why the strongest Navy in the world can’t clear it, or at least safely escort ships through it, and may not be able to do it for awhile. There’s a few things to consider. First there are two ways Iran closes the Strait – the use of mines and ship-killing rocket, missile and drone barrages. “Mines” is a somewhat archaic term we use for what is now a wide range of devices that fix to the bottom, float up on a tether, can drift and even move under self propulsion. Also uncrewed surface vehicles (USV) are not strictly mines, more like wet drones, but they create a mine like threat for ships moving through an area. (Ukraine pioneered these against the Russian Navy effectively denying much of the Black Sea to their operations). All of these ‘mines’ can be set with variable arming mechanisms that either wait a set amount of time or count the number of targetable ships that pass overhead (1 to 99) before activating. Iran has a dozen or so different mines that can be deployed in a lot of ways. But most of the boats which do this are civilian vessels converted to military use and may not be immediately apparent as such. All of which is to say that Iran has a lot of ways to deploy mines and its not immediately apparent they have. This is why there’s been confusion as to whether the Strait has, or has not been mined. I’ve seen credible estimates from open sources of up to 10 mines. Which doesn’t’ sound like much. But again, the tankers they’re targeting are multiple hundred million dollar losses if you can take one out (ship + carried oil) and it doesn’t take many mines to shut down the Strait. Even the threat of mines, which is clearly in play, has proven to be enough.

Mine clearing is a difficult time consuming and slow operation. It takes a specialized ship with expert crews and a lot of time to do properly. The good news is the US had four proven Avenger class minesweepers dedicated to Persian Gulf duty that have been on station there for decades. Built with wooden hulls, to defeat magnetic detection, these ships are purpose built for this mission. The bad news is that the US decommissioned all four of those last year. (Cue Simpson bully pointing and shouting “HA HA!”) The US has replaced these with three multipurpose littoral combat ships (LCS) that have tried to be Swiss army knives fulfilling multiple missions. Only one of which is minesweeping. There are three of these vessels, and for reasons that haven’t been fully explained, two of these were spotted in Malaysia last week. This may be to give them safe ports during the war so they aren’t targeted, given we only have three. But it also explains why Trump has been calling for help from other countries with more established reliable and tested minesweeping capabilities.

The second major threat are ship killer rocket, missiles, and drone barrages. And this is probably the bigger problem. If the Strait of Hormuz were a spherical cow, clearing it of mines even while conducting escorts would be relatively strait forward, if time consuming process. But the Strait is an elbow shaped crook of water ranging from 20m-60m wide. And though that sounds like a lot, that’s not a lot of room when the coastline of Iran’s Hormozgan Province and the Iranian interior is firing hypersonic rockets and missiles at you. Even the Shahed drone with its chonky “LAWD HE COMING” 115mph speed, would go from shore to boom in 11-33 minutes. But for a rocket or missile going Mach1-5 that time is in seconds. That makes the Strait of Hormuz a huge killbox and why the US Navy has all its vessels parked outside of it, in the Gulf of Oman. As powerful as a US aircraft carrier group is with all their anti-missile technology, it’s a huge risk to expose it to dedicated barrages and drone swarms.

The problem of clearing the Strait, or escorting ships through it, is of barrage capability is you can’t just bomb the shoreline. With Iran’s proven distance punching of rockets, ballistic missiles and drones – those can be fired from the interior. To properly clear the Strait, assuming spherical cow logistics, is to send a ground force in to occupy Hormozgan Province. They could conduct a land invasion, occupy the hills and mountains to conduct sweeps clearing out pockets of IRGC while setting up radars and batteries on the mountains and hills. From that position incoming rockets, missiles and drones from the interior could be detected and intercepted in a projected depth out from the Straits which would be a lot safer. The province has about 1.7M people with the largest city, Bandar Abbas sporting ~500,000 so we’re talking at least 10-50k ground troops and oh F-35 now we’re back in a forever war.

So that’s the escalation rungs on the current ladder. But something to keep an eye on, and what I’m hitting refresh on the regular, is any movement by the Houthis. Because while oil infrastructure, desalination plants, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz is going up the escalation ladder, the Houthis entering the war is a new ladder. The Houthis have the strongest fighting capacity of any of Iran’s three proxies: Hezbollah, Iraqi PMF and them. Their positions is also the best for strategic influence. Sitting in Yemen they can punch to the left into the Red Sea and the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, recreating all the problems of the Strait of Hormuz. Punching to their right gets them into the Gulf of Oman, where the US Navy is staging right now staying outside the Strait of Hormuz. And during the Israel-Hamas war, and even earlier counter-Saudi actions they proved capable of sending missiles and drones as far as Israel and the Kingdom. The good news is they haven’t activated yet. This may be fundamental or circumstantial. In a fundamental way the Houthis are not as closely tied to Iran as either Hezbollah or the Iraqi PMF are. These two groups were literally created with Iran’s help, supported throughout, and their interests 100% overlap with the continuation of Iran. The Houthis are different. Different sect of Shia, different origin stories arising out of the Arab Spring uprisings, and different set of interests. The Houthis want control of Yemen, and in that ended up fighting Saudi and GCC efforts. Iran was the enemy-of-my-enemy who became a temporary friend. And Iran supplied them with drones, rockets, missiles and other gear. But there’s always been a rift in the Houthis of how closely they are aligned to Iran’s fate. And the decimation strikes of the Supreme Leader and IRGC may have convinced the Houthis they want none of that smoke. As well positioned they are to hit both flanks, both of those flanks can hit back at them. The USCG Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf of Oman and the USCG Ford in the Red Sea can both reach out and hit the Houthis hard if they move. This would of course draw their actions away from defending other targets or attacking Iran; part of Iran’s mosaic warfare strategy, but that’s a lot of firepower for the Houthis to take on.

That’s the fundamental contingency. The circumstantial contingency is that the Houthis remain deeply loyal to Iran, and are just awaiting orders or circumstance to activate. This is the ‘dry powder’ theory, that Houthis were ordered or always planned to stay out of any war in order to hoard their barrage capabilities. At a crucial point they would enter, creating enough additive complexity to collapse the other side.

And this is why whether Iran has no C2 – as claimed by President Trump and SecDoW-bow-wow-yippy-yo-yippy-yay Hegseth matters. If they have no C2, and the Houthi are waiting for orders, either out of principle or enlightened self interest, and no orders are coming, they may stay unengaged. This is a huge relief on US forces already trying to deal with a regional war. If the Houthis can be ordered at any time to enter by a still active C2 of the Iranian regime, or are waiting pre-established “If Then” rules activation, then them entering the conflict wouldn’t just represent a new rung on the ladder of escalation, but a whole new ladder itself. Because the Houthis, unlike Hezbollah and Iraqi PMF’s, have the ability to complicate and escalate up every rung on the ladder described above. They can target military and civilian infrastructure just about anywhere Hezbollah or Iran can. They can also hit oil and natural gas infrastructure, or desalination plants in the Gulf Hezbollah or Iraqi PMF can’t. Finally they can complicate any effort to open the Gulf. And in a worst case scenario, their “If Then” activation rule is to wait until the US navy enters the Strait in an attempt to force it open then joins Iranian forces in barraging the flotilla from two directions at once.

And the 12th of April, which is the earliest possible end, even if unlikey, to major combat operations is still 24 days away. That’s more than enough time for the war to put a hurt on regional production, refining, shipping infrastructure that will take years if not decades to overcome. And that’s also plenty of time for the Houthis to open up that second ladder.