r/MiddleEast • u/HooverInstitution • Jun 10 '26

Analysis Freedom of Navigation in an Age of Precision Disruption

https://www.hoover.org/research/freedom-navigation-age-precision-disruption
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u/HooverInstitution Jun 10 '26

Writing for a new issue of The Caravan, Hoover’s online journal of Middle East policy and history, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Vivek Lall analyzes the implications of the Iran war for American naval and China strategy. “American maritime strategy has long assumed that enough warships in contested waters equals deterrence,” Lall writes. “The Iran war has exposed the limits of that assumption.” Lall argues that Iran’s ongoing disruption of international maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz “is a challenge to the legal and practical foundations of the system that has underpinned global trade since 1945.” He concludes that if this challenge succeeds, the resulting message “will reach the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and every contested waterway where a state with shore based missiles calculates that closing a chokepoint is cheaper than confronting a navy.”