‘No need to worry about it’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday dismissed concerns that effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz because of the Iran war, which has sent oil prices soaring, will remain a long-term problem for the US and the world.

“We’re dealing with it and we don’t have to worry about it,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon press briefing.

Hegseth criticized media reports which claimed that the United States military did not have a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before the war began.

Hegseth told a reporter, “We planned for this. We recognize this.”

“Ultimately, we want to do it sequentially in the way that makes the most sense for what we want to accomplish.”

Neither Hegseth nor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Kane explained how the United States would open the strait to oil tankers and other ships.

On Thursday morning, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC that the US Navy is not prepared to move oil tankers through the strait. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant told Sky News hours later that the US Navy, and possibly an international coalition, would begin moving ships through the strait as soon as “militarily feasible”.

Asked how soon the Strait of Hormuz would be open to traffic, Hegseth said Friday, “The only thing restricting transit through the strait right now is Iran firing on shipping.”

“This is not a problem that we will not challenge or allow without the flow of goods,” Hegseth said.

When asked about removing mines from the Strait of Hormuz laid by Iran, Kane said, “We have a number of options to solve a variety of problems.”

“There is significant doubt that a robust U.S. Navy tanker escort service will become operational any time soon due to capacity constraints as well as the fact that Iran’s enhanced military capabilities will pose a greater challenge than the U.S. faced during the tanker wars of the 1980s,” RBC Capital Markets said in a note Friday.

The note also said that $20 billion of insurance promoted by the US International Development Finance Corp. to encourage oil tankers and other commercial ships to begin direct transit is not generating much enthusiasm because it only covers about 22 miles of sea lanes in the strait, not surrounding waterways, and provides neither casualty nor environmental coverage.

“Most of all, we are struck by the fact that many Washington-based securities analysts are working with longer time horizons than market participants living outside the Beltway,” wrote RBS’s Helima Croft, head of global commodities strategy and MENA research.