Trump says reopening Hormuz a 'big priority' in any Iran deal

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz is now "a very big priority" for any deal to end the Iran war, US President Donald Trump said April 6, a day ahead of the deadline he has set for Tehran to reach an agreement.

"We have to have a deal that's acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be we want free traffic of oil and everything," Trump said during a press conference.

The comments come a day after Trump said on his Truth Social media site that the US would strike power plants and bridges in Iran if Tehran does not open the Strait of Hormuz by 8 pm ET on April 7. The US and Israel have been at war with Iran since Feb. 28, which led to Iran effectively shuting the key waterway, through which 20% of the world's oil and LNG flows.

Trump doubled down on this threat during the news conference, saying the US has a plan to decimate every bridge and explode every power plant in Iran within four hours of that April 7 deadline.

Trump also said he would rather have the US, not Iran, charge tolls for going through Hormuz.

"Why shouldn't we? We're the winner," he said. "We have a concept where we'll charge tolls."

US options

Reopening the strait now that Iran has effectively closed it would require a multi-pronged effort, Sam Mundy, a retired lieutenant general in the US Marine Corps, said during an April 6 online event hosted by the Middle East Institute.

This would include sufficient defense against Iran's remaining missiles and drones, persistent overhead surveillance, and either an agreement or enough force to compel Iran to stop interfering, he said.

This force could include US ground troops on one or more islands in the Persian Gulf or in the strait, Mundy said. This could limit Iran's ability to use the islands to control the strait, and put the islands "more in favor of the coalition or the combined force," he said.

Karen Young, a senior fellow at MEI, says that five weeks into the conflict, a looming tipping point is approaching at which the effective closure of the strait will have increasing impacts on oil and gas infrastructure and prices.

"Six weeks was sort of a bit of a crisis deadline, because of the way that creates production scarring and sort of a longer tail in terms of price implications, basically, that we would have much higher oil prices into the next year," Young said during the event. "And getting into a 10-week kind of marker makes that even worse."

David Goldwyn, chair of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center's Energy Advisory Group, argued the US cannot assure safe shipment through the strait by military means.

And the buffers that have softened the price impact so far -- including commercial inventories, floating storage, and petroleum reserve releases -- are running out, Goldwyn told Platts, part of S&P Global Energy.

The Iranian regime has long calculated that it has a higher pain tolerance for military attack than the US has for high gasoline prices, Goldwyn said in an email.

"If the straits remain closed for two more months, we are looking at $150-$200 oil and six-dollar gasoline," he said.