Tehran has quietly changed the way it goes after merchant ships, and two senior Iranian officials are unusually candid about the motive: keeping crude expensive until Americans head to the polls on 3 November. Speaking to Reuters, they said the new approach began roughly ten days ago, alters both the kind and the frequency of strikes on vessels Iran accuses of defying its rules, and was signed off at the very top of the leadership.
The map is getting bigger as well. Iran intends to carry its campaign past the strait itself, reaching Omani waters and beyond. One official warned that offending ships would be “safe nowhere” and predicted a “complete closure soon”. Explaining the plan to frustrate any slide in oil prices, the other described the contest with Washington as “a game of chess”.
Shipping data suggests this is more than talk. Britain’s UKMTO logged six hits on Sunday 11 October alone, all but one of them on tankers, a daily record for the conflict. A drone set the Petro Dolphin, a modest fuel carrier, ablaze off Sohar in Oman, and India said two of its seafarers were missing. Further strikes were reported off Qatar and along the UAE coast.
An American officer, speaking anonymously, backed up at least part of the story. With much of its radar network wrecked by American strikes, the Revolutionary Guards now lean on unarmed lookouts in small craft. Last week US forces ordered the crew off one such dhow and then sank it; nobody was hurt.
At home, the war that began with US and Israeli strikes on 28 February has become a midterm issue, not least because of its price tag of about $3bn a month. Donald Trump has ruled out fresh strikes on Iran ahead of polling day, and America’s top diplomat Marco Rubio insists the waterway is “open”, with oil exports almost back to pre-war levels.
