U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the bombing of military facilities on Iran’s oil-loading island of Kharg and threatened to destroy oil terminals, escalating efforts to end Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global oil supplies.
The situation, according to retired three-star U.S. Air Force General S. Clinton Hinote, is fraught with difficulty. “The Iranians have always known they are far inferior to us militarily,” Hinote told Der Spiegel. “But through the blockade, they can inflict pain worldwide – and pressure their adversaries into stopping the attacks.”
Hinote, who in the mid-2000s developed war scenarios against Iran under the George W. Bush administration, asserts that every military option to secure the Strait of Hormuz carries substantial, potentially insurmountable risks. He has been addressing the question of how to break Iran’s blockade as a former Air Force chief strategist.
The current crisis echoes considerations from two decades ago. Hinote’s team previously presented commanders with potential military targets, including strikes on airfields, air defenses, naval bases, and key figures within the regime and the Revolutionary Guard. The current actions by President Trump align with those earlier scenarios, according to Hinote.
A central element in those past scenarios, and now in the present situation, is the potential for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. “The Strait of Hormuz is a hard, almost impossible, problem to solve through military means alone,” Hinote stated, as reported by X, formerly known as Twitter.
The New York Times reported on March 12, 2026, that the blockade is a direct result of the ongoing war, though the specifics of that conflict remain largely unaddressed in available reporting. Trump’s call for other nations to deploy warships to the Strait has so far yielded no publicly announced commitments.
Hinote’s assessment, as relayed to Der Spiegel, suggests a grim outlook. “Iran must only succeed once to trigger a catastrophe,” he warned, indicating the potential for a single successful disruption to have far-reaching consequences. The precise nature of that potential catastrophe remains undefined.
