Juan Cole
Informed Comment / April 14, 2026
Ann Arbor – For the Trump administration to announce a blockade on shipping from the Strait of Hormuz is very much like the person sitting on a tall tree branch and sawing on the part of the branch between the tree and that individual.
If the point is to reopen the Gulf to shipping, US Navy threats to civilian commercial vessels are not going to help. Ships have to be worried now about both the Iranian and the US, both of them notoriously trigger-happy.
If the US Navy establishes some sort of protocol with the tankers such that it will allow vessels to transit that do not berth at Iranian ports, starving Iran of petroleum export revenue, the likely result is that Iran will send drones against the ships of oil producers such as the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait. During the Israeli-US war on Iran this spring, Tehran repeatedly hit commercial ships in the Gulf, striking 28. While tankers have had their hulls thickened so that they cannot easily be sunk by mines, petroleum and LNG tankers are vulnerable to missiles and drones that land on them from above. The US Navy is overconfident that it can deal with such drone threats because of its successes in the Red Sea in avoiding being hit by the Houthis in Yemen. But Iran has more and better drones and missiles than do the Houthis, a lot of US radar capacity has been destroyed by Iran, and the US Navy could not convince Maersk and other major shipping companies to continue to use the Red Sea route as long as the Houthis threatened them.
A big problem with a US attempt to serve as gate keeper for shipping through the Strait is that 90% of Iranian petroleum exports, totalling about 1.5 million barrels a day, goes to China. If the US does not allow those ships bound for China to transit Hormuz, that would actually be a blockade of Chinese commerce, which is an act of war in international law.
Guo Jiakun, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at his press conference Monday,
“The Strait of Hormuz is an important international trade route for goods and energy. Keeping the area safe and stable and ensuring unimpeded passage serves the common interest of the international community. The root cause of the disruption at the Strait of Hormuz is the military conflict. To solve the issue, the conflict must stop as soon as possible. All parties need to remain calm and exercise restraint. China will continue playing a constructive role.
“As to the purchase of oil, China stands ready to work with others to jointly safeguard global energy security and keep supply chains stable. However, to fundamentally resolve the issue, what needs to be done first and foremost is to restore peace and stability in the Gulf and Middle East region. Venezuela is a sovereign state and has full permanent sovereignty over all its natural resources and economic activities. It has the right to choose its own partners of cooperation. Other countries have no right to dictate to it.”
Asked by Russia’s RIA Novosti about Trump’s threat on Sunday to impose an extra 50% tariff on China if it is caught supplying military equipment to Iran, Guo Jiakun replied, “China’s position is very clear. Tariff wars have no winners.”
[The US Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump cannot raise tariffs on a whim.]Asked by Bloomberg if China is supplying Iran militarily, Guo Jiakun said, “China always acts prudently and responsibly on the export of military products, and exercises strict control in accordance with China’s laws and regulations on export control and due international obligations. China opposes groundless smear and ill-intentioned association.”
That doesn’t sound like a denial to me.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reinforced the point on Monday at a meeting with a delegation from the United Arab Emirates. He said that “blocking the Strait of Hormuz is not in the common interests of the international community, and achieving a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire through political and diplomatic means is the fundamental way to resolve the issue.”
News reports indicate that a US-sanctioned Chinese oil tanker, the Rich Starry, transited the Gulf of Hormuz Tuesday morning, after it made an initial approach and briefly turned back. The ship is on a US government blacklist for having helped Iran evade US sanctions.
The report indicates that so far the US Navy is not interdicting Chinese tankers, at least, with ties to Iranian petroleum exports. It is not clear whether this incident was a fluke or whether the US Navy has instructions not to tangle with China. Perhaps Washington only intends to interdict ships flagged with countries of the global south that transport petroleum between Iran and China, which are often called ghost ships because they turn their transponders off to avoid US naval patrols.
China imports nearly 11 million barrels of petroleum a day, 5 million from the Persian Gulf (mainly the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iran). It thus has skin in this game. Beijing is cushioned, however, in several ways. It produces 27% of the petroleum it uses itself. It has six months of petroleum reserves. Some 53% of new car purchases in China are electric, so that its consumption of gasoline may fall this year and every year into the future. It also has pipelines to bring it Russian oil. China will not want to risk war with the US over Iran. But Beijing will certainly view with alarm any plot by Washington to cut it off from the 40% of its oil supply that is in the Middle East.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment; he is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan
