It’s called the Persian Gulf for a reason. Iran has dominated this crucial waterway except when in internal disarray or checked by an outside power, namely Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and, after 1971, the U.S.
Oman, which has tried to improve relations with the Islamic Republic for years, has always stood apart from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So it wouldn’t be surprising to see Oman agree to establish a tolling regimen with Tehran for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point to the Persian Gulf.
Iran’s limited attacks on Omani territory in March and May signaled to Muscat that Washington can no longer protect the country. Unless the Trump administration soon realizes how precarious the American and Gulf Arab positions are, the Islamic Republic may do what Saddam Hussein only dreamed of.
The U.S. was always a reluctant hegemon in the Gulf. After the departure of the British in 1971, a Vietnam-weary America enlisted its local allies to protect the waterway. The policy was called “twin pillars,” meaning Saudi Arabia and Iran would do the heavy lifting. In reality, there was only one proxy: Iran. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 ended the experiment.
America was obliged to take charge. In 1980 Jimmy Carter announced a new doctrine: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The Gulf was now menaced by the Soviet Union and revisionist regional actors. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the U.S. Navy kept both parties at bay and the waterway open. The cost: two frigates badly damaged, 37 sailors killed and 31 wounded.
Saddam tested Washington again when he attempted to extinguish Kuwait in 1990. If the Iraqi dictator had been allowed to digest that city-state, he probably would have invaded other neighbors or reorganized the region as a cash machine for his aggression.
The Islamic Republic doesn’t yet have a military that would allow it to invade its neighbors; it does, however, have the armed forces and the ideology to extort them if no Western power is there to prevent it. Washington may be tempted to move its bases from the Persian Gulf region since many of them sustained substantial damage, and our Arab allies can be fair-weather friends. Militarily and morally, it makes some sense; strategically, it would be a disaster.
Amid President Trump’s hesitancy to thwart Tehran’s bid for supremacy over Hormuz, Iran’s rulers sense the end of American hegemony. The Israeli-American wars against the clerical regime have ironically shown it a way to shatter the anti-Iran regional order. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. may hope they can circumnavigate the Islamic Republic by moving oil through new pipelines, but those pipelines will remain vulnerable to missiles and drones. Tehran’s offensive capacity has proved more effective than the combined aerial defense of the Gulf kingdoms and the U.S. And if Washington’s ability to produce interceptors swiftly and in sufficient quantity is in question, what remains of Arab fortitude will likely collapse.
The clerical regime is willing to absorb severe punishment—far more than the militaries of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates could ever dole out by themselves. Even if Mr. Trump doesn’t understand that the region’s development—what he called its “gleaming marvels”—has depended on the U.S., on the unchallengeable awe that has sailed with American warships, the Islamic Republic and the Gulf Arabs do.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly shown since 2019, when Iran attacked Persian Gulf shipping and the Saudi oil facilities at Khurais and Abqaiq, that he doesn’t see attacks on the Arabs as a casus belli for Washington. His 2026 National Defense Strategy sought “to empower regional allies and partners to take primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its proxies,” signaling America’s unreliability as a strategic partner. The current war has, so far, confirmed that.
Whatever credibility Washington still has in the Middle East depends on its willingness to maintain bases in the Gulf and in Iraq—and that places U.S. forces in harm’s way. Given our failure so far to fight the Battle of Hormuz and our inability to defend our allies adequately, this lever has lost some of the deterrence that once scared the Islamic Republic’s rulers. But it’s all we have now in an otherwise deteriorating situation.
If the Trump administration is unwilling to try to win this war militarily—which could entail losing destroyers, placing ground troops on Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf, and running convoys under fire for an indefinite period—then it needs to think about how to minimize America’s losses, to keep the failure at Hormuz from turning into a regional, if not global, rout.
The first step is to make clear that American bases in the most dangerous parts of the Middle East aren’t going anywhere. The Islamic Republic has profound internal problems. We should commit to waiting them out.
Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.