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The conventional wisdom is that US President Donald Trump will eventually negotiate a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and bring the war in Iran to a close. Nafeez Ahmed in Byline Times has argued the reverse is true: that the strait may now be closed for good, and that this is the new shape of the region.
Either way, Trump’s constant announcements (he’s up to 38) about a deal being just around the corner are not remotely credible, and haven’t been for some time. On Thursday, following a round of tit-for-tat fire, Trump promised a night of “hard strikes” and that US forces will even take Kharg Island through which Iran exports 90% of its oil, and take control of Iranian oil and gas facilities.
Both the US and Iran are sticking to maximalist demands, and Iran believes it has the upper hand in both the war and the negotiations. The recent strikes between Israel and Iran further illustrate that Israel will need to be involved in ending the war as well.
There are, however, some options that haven’t been explored – mostly because they’re even worse than the continued closure of the strait. Three of them are an unrestricted air campaign, ground invasion, and abject US surrender. All are terrible options for different reasons, but they would achieve the goal of opening the strait and bringing the war to a close.
Unrestricted Aerial Warfare
The first option is some form of unrestricted aerial warfare designed to make conditions on the ground in Iran inconsistent with life. The key component of this strategy would be strikes against water infrastructure, including dams, reservoirs, desalination plants, and pumping stations. It would also likely include the destruction of electrical infrastructure to ensure that any surviving pumping stations had no power. This would result in a humanitarian crisis of an almost unimaginable magnitude, with tens of millions fleeing or dying of thirst or disease.
Both the US and Iran know that if the US does this, Iran will target desalination plants across the Persian Gulf, turning a country-level mass death and refugee event into a regional one. To avoid this, the US might consider using one or more nuclear high-altitude electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) to destroy electronic devices across Iran that use transistors: which is to say, virtually any electronic device more sophisticated than a toaster.
This would certainly limit Iran’s ability to conduct counter-strikes against Gulf state water infrastructure in retaliation. It would also turn a conventional conflict into a nuclear one, albeit one where nothing on the ground is destroyed. Regardless, it would constitute a mass crime against humanity. The EMP might also violate US policy against nuclear first strike, although Trump and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have spent the past 17 months putting military leadership in place that would be more amenable to green-lighting it.
This option has the potential to be the “cleanest” victory for the US, with Iran destroyed and Trump appearing strong. It would also be a huge crime against humanity and completely unite the world against the US.
There’s also no guarantee it would work. Controlling the exact area of effect for a nuclear electromagnetic pulse is extremely difficult because the pulse is a large-scale environmental reaction rather than a localised blast. Once a nuclear device is detonated, the EMP footprint is determined by natural atmospheric physics and the Earth’s magnetic field, making precise targeting nearly impossible.
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