Iran’s secret weapon in its war against the US is also its biggest bargaining chip

April 19, 2026 — 4:45pm

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The United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on the argument that if Iran one day got a nuclear weapon, it would have the ultimate deterrent against future attacks.

It turns out that Iran already has a deterrent: its geography.

Iran’s decision to flex its control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply flows, has brought global economic pain in the form of higher prices for petrol, fertiliser and other staples.

It has upended war planning in the US and Israel, where officials have had to devise military options to wrest the strait from Iranian control.

The US-Israeli war has significantly damaged Iran’s leadership structure, larger naval vessels and missile-production facilities, but it has done little to restrict Iran’s ability to control the strait.

Iran could thus emerge from the conflict with a blueprint for its hard-line theocratic government to keep its adversaries at bay, regardless of any restrictions on its nuclear program.

“Everyone now knows that if there is a conflict in the future, closing the strait will be the first thing in the Iranian textbook,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israel’s military intelligence agency and now a fellow at the Atlantic Council. “You cannot beat geography.”

In several social media posts on Friday, President Donald Trump said the strait – which in one post, he called the “Strait........

© The Sydney Morning Herald