How the US Is Quietly Getting Tankers Through the Strait

Oil isn't exactly streaming out of the Persian Gulf these days—but it's moving again, thanks in large part to a quiet US effort. The New York Times reports that since May, American warships, aircraft, and air defenses have been covertly protecting tankers from Iranian drones and missiles along a narrow lane in the Strait of Hormuz, where ships essentially hug Oman's coast in a workaround to Iran's increasingly dangerous grip on its side of the strait. Before the war, about 15 million barrels of crude a day flowed through the chokepoint; now, US-shielded routes are seeing roughly a third of that pass through. Central Command, which is behind the operation, says the US has helped more than 1,000 ships make it through.

A shipping analyst tells the Times the Navy effort has been a "surprising success," saying "they have been extraordinarily effective in keeping that southern corridor operating." But the operation is costly, risky, and draining. For instance, the Navy must now resupply its ships on distant Diego Garcia, an island off southern India that requires a 10-day roundtrip. It's also using up resources that had been deployed elsewhere. "It's extremely labor intensive to provide for that kind of persistent defense," says Joshua Tallis with the Center for Naval Analyses. Read the full piece here.