World

Iran Shut the Strait of Hormuz After a Second Night of US Strikes

By Mike Harper · June 10, 2026

The thing the war was launched to prevent just happened.

Iran’s military declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to all traffic — including commercial vessels — early Thursday morning local time, hours after US forces completed a second consecutive night of strikes against Iranian targets. The strait carries approximately 20% of the world’s seaborne oil supply. It is now shut.

The closure is not a threat. It is not a warning. It is a declaration by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that the waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean is no longer available to commercial shipping. The practical effect — if enforced — would be the most severe disruption to global energy supply since the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

Brent crude rose to $91.10 per barrel Wednesday, up 1.8%, before the closure was announced. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are already down 4.5% and 7.1% respectively from their June 2 highs. Gas nationally is $4.55. It will not stay there.

The sequence that produced the closure unfolded over 48 hours.

On Tuesday night, US forces struck Iranian radar installations, drone facilities, and coastal defense systems along Iran’s southern coast. On Wednesday, Trump said publicly he would hit Iran “hard.” He met with his national security team in the Situation Room to discuss the military action. CENTCOM then launched a second round of strikes beginning at 5:15 PM ET Wednesday, targeting ammunition depots, command-and-control nodes, and warehouses across multiple Iranian cities including Bandar Abbas — the port city that sits directly on the strait.

Iranian media reported explosions and air defense activations in multiple cities. CENTCOM said it completed the strikes by 9 PM ET and described them as “self-defensive.”

Then Iran closed the strait.

Among the targets struck by US forces: two concrete water storage reservoirs in the Bamani district of Hormozgan province, serving at least 20,000 Iranian civilians. Water facilities are protected under the Geneva Convention. In March, Trump had floated the idea of attacking Iran’s water desalination plants on Truth Social — a threat that alarmed America’s Gulf allies at the time.

The war is now in its 104th day. The ceasefire declared April 8 has been a ceasefire in name only for weeks — US strikes on Iran, Iranian missiles at US bases in Kuwait, a drone shootdown, a helicopter crash, and now two consecutive nights of sustained American bombing followed by Iran’s most consequential military decision of the conflict.

The strait had been partially disrupted since the war began on February 28, with traffic reduced from 125-140 vessels per day to a few dozen. A full closure is a different category of event. It means oil tankers cannot transit. It means liquefied natural gas cannot move. It means the supply shock that has been driving inflation since March is about to accelerate.

Trump said Tuesday that a deal was “two to three days away.” He has said that before. The strait is now closed.