Even with US Navy warships, getting oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz isn't likely to be quick or easy, analysts say

• Cheap drones, missiles, and mines make chokepoints like Hormuz harder for the US to secure quickly.
• The US Navy could need weeks or months to fully secure shipping lanes.
• Even limited transit disruptions can spike oil prices and rattle global markets.

The "load-bearing assumption" among some investors that US Navy warships can easily keep vital chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz open in times of conflict is slowly crumbling, steadily driving oil prices higher, a leading energy consultant said this week.

Robert McNally, a former Bush administration official and Rapidan consultant, told Business Insider on Wednesday that the market situation could worsen as US efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which handles 20% of the world's oil flows, drag on and as the potential scale of the looming energy crisis hits investors.

There is a "belief that something like this either can't happen, which was the belief before, or can't go on for long," McNally said, but as time goes on, "the remaining reservoir of just disbelief" that an essential energy chokepoint could be restricted for this long "is going to drain away," pushing prices higher in "the world's, by far, largest energy disruption in history."

To militarily secure the oil route for tanker movement, US forces will first need to substantially degrade Iran's missile, drone, and mine threats, the oil consultant and a military analyst said. That campaign could take weeks or months — long enough to significantly drive up oil prices and rattle global markets.

Surging prices and bleak predictions

The US has already been at war with Iran for weeks now. Over a dozen foreign oil tankers have been struck amid the fighting, and Brent crude prices have been climbing, jumping recently to over $100 per barrel, up from about $70 just before the conflict began, briefly surging toward $120 in the latest spike before edging back down. Year to date, oil prices have risen 78%, largely driven by disruptions created by the Iran war.

McNally predicted bleaker market outcomes if the war continues or if the conflict's combatants — the US, Israel, and Iran — target the so-called "crown jewels" of the global energy system, escalating the crisis rather than reining it in.

Israeli strikes on the South Pars Gas Field in Iran on Wednesday and Tehran's retaliatory strike on Qatar's LNG gas facility have set the stage for that kind of tit-for-tat escalation, even as President Donald Trump attempts to manage the increasingly volatile situation via his social media accounts.

Despite growing market concerns, the US Navy hasn't stepped in to escort oil tankers the way it has in past periods of conflict and tension in the Middle East. Trump administration officials have said that escorts might be an option when it's "militarily possible."

"It takes a while to secure a strait. Iran has a lot of asymmetric layered capabilities," McNally said, pointing to "potent" weaponry ranging from coastal defense missiles to mines to mini-submarines. An escorting warship accompanies a tanker to protect it from threats like missiles, small boats, and even attack drones that Iran can use with little notice in the strait or on the approaches to it.

Escort missions come only "after you pummel Iran for weeks," he said.

US Central Command, which oversees American operations in the Middle East, said on Tuesday that US forces had dropped 5,000-pound bunker busters against hardened anti-ship cruise missile targets along the Iranian shoreline. And on Thursday, the command released video footage of strikes on Iranian naval targets that "threaten international shipping in and near the Strait of Hormuz."

US armed forces have so far sunk over 120 Iranian naval vessels while also targeting naval drone facilities, storage centers for sea mines, and torpedo production sites. Additionally, A-10 attack aircraft are in the fight, gunning for Iranian fast boats.

The US military is "zeroed in on dismantling Iran's decades-old threat to the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz," CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said on Monday.

"And we're not done," he said.

A process, not a quick fix

Assumptions that the US can quickly and easily secure vital sea lanes have been shaped by past conflicts where American naval power restored order relatively quickly.

During the Tanker War in the 1980s, US-led escorts helped keep oil flowing despite attacks in the Gulf between Iran and Iraq, and in later conflicts, the US military demonstrated the ability to rapidly overwhelm adversaries.

Those experiences, McNally said, have reinforced a broader expectation in certain markets and policy circles that any disruption to key chokepoints would be short-lived and manageable. That assumption is now colliding with very different threats.

"The weapons proliferation has just dramatically expanded," Bryan Clark, a retired US Navy officer and a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, told Business Insider on Wednesday.

"You can sort of hang on forever by just using Shahed drones and little drone attack boats," he said, adding that "drones are going to be the biggest threat."

In heavily constricted waterways, like the Strait of Hormuz, which is just 21 nautical miles across at its narrowest point, state and non-state actors can "basically create an ambush situation where you can target shipping," he said.

An Iranian anti-ship cruise missile could hit a tanker in the strait within seconds, giving warship crews very little time to react. And that is only one potential threat.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group in Yemen, seized on that exact opportunity in recent years, targeting both military and commercial vessels around the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

To forcefully curb the Houthi threat, the US launched Operation Rough Rider in March 2025. That effort took 52 days and more than $1 billion to get the rebels to stand down — and shipping still hasn't fully recovered, as many commercial shipping companies have opted for higher prices and longer transit times rather than face the elevated security risks.

The current situation carries greater complexities. Iran has a much deeper arsenal than its proxies, and it has leverage as long as it is willing and able to fight. There are no alternative routes to the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers loaded with crude oil or LNG.

Launching a naval escort mission in the Strait of Hormuz "would pretty much take up all of our deployed forces in that region," Clark said. Without allied support, which isn't coming together, "it's going to take at least a dozen destroyers to do the escort mission."

"They would be all tied up doing that," he said.

Israel, waging war against Iran alongside the US military, has a small surface fleet. US European allies have balked at entering the conflict, though some have deployed ships to defend their assets in the region. Some allies have shown support in condemnations of Iran, but for a potential escort mission, the US could be forced to go it alone, relying on a mix of combat air patrols and naval power.

Clark warned that the mission could go on for months because the Iranians "can hold out for a long time, given the number of weapons they've squirreled away." The Pentagon has acknowledged the challenge of weaponry buried over decades.

As cheap weapons like Shahed drones lower the barrier to entry for precision strike for countries like Iran and aggressive non-state actors like the Houthis, McNally said that it looks like oil disruption is increasingly becoming a tool of coercion in modern conflict. These vessels are being targeted, not merely caught in the crossfire, and that will demand shifts in strategic-level thinking.

Even without a full shutdown of important chokepoints, any disruption alone can shake global markets. In energy markets, delays and uncertainty can trigger price spikes. That's leverage for malign actors, even those limited in conventional military might.

McNally said that "folks will be watching very closely how successful we will be in the coming weeks in suppressing that."