For days, U.S. President Donald Trump has been trying to end the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz imposed by Iran as a result of the war. He has ordered military facilities on Iran’s oil-loading island of Kharg to be bombed. He has threatened to destroy the oil terminals. And he is calling on other countries to send warships into the Strait of Hormuz.

S. Clinton Hinote is a retired three-star U.S. Air Force general. In the mid-2000s, under U.S. President George W. Bush, he developed scenarios for a possible war against Iran. He says that every military option for securing the Strait of Hormuz involves risks that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to eliminate.

DER SPIEGEL: Lieutenant General Hinote, what options did you develop for a military operation against Iran?

Lieutenant General Hinote: I can’t get into the details of the plans. But what we are seeing now at the military level is not all that different from what we were thinking about. The comprehensive strikes on military airfields, air defense and naval bases, and on the top representatives of the regime and the Revolutionary Guard – all of that represents the type of military targets that my team and I presented to our commanders back then.

DER SPIEGEL: What role did a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz play in your considerations?

Hinote: In almost all of our scenarios, the closure of this strait appeared as a possible countermove. The Iranians have always known they are far inferior to us militarily. But through the blockade, they can inflict pain worldwide – and pressure their adversaries into stopping the attacks.

DER SPIEGEL: Donald Trump has considered the idea of using warships to escort oil tankers and ships carrying liquified natural gas through the strait. What do you think of such a tactic?

Hinote: I am confident that our escorts would do an excellent job and fend off the vast majority of attacks on their own ships and on the tankers – all the more so with comprehensive Air Force support. But I am doubtful that our people could guarantee 100 percent protection.

DER SPIEGEL: Why is that?

Hinote: First, the strait is extremely narrow. There are only two shipping lanes for supertankers in the Strait of Hormuz: one for entering the Persian Gulf and one for exiting. Both are only about two miles wide. In between, there is a buffer zone that's also only about two miles wide. So our adversaries know exactly where the ships will be traveling, which allows them to plan their attacks with precision.

DER SPIEGEL: And second?

Hinote: Second, Iran has a wide array of offensive weapons: boats, missiles, drone boats, underwater drones, aerial drones. The risk from drones has grown particularly acute. Ukraine practically neutralized the Russian Black Sea Fleet through the use of drones. We would, of course, be able to fend off the vast majority of attacks. But the adversary only has to succeed once to trigger a catastrophe. These enormous ships are slow. They have no defense systems like our destroyers. They're nearly defenseless.

DER SPIEGEL: Some of these oil tankers can carry more than 300 million liters of crude oil. A vast oil spill would be the result.

Hinote: Yes. What would happen if just a single drone gets through and a supertanker starts burning in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz? The price to be paid if something goes wrong in the Strait of Hormuz is far too high. When you're defending a convoy, you have to be 100 percent successful. As long as the passage is not guaranteed, no ship owner will expose their crew to that danger. Even if an insurer were actually willing to underwrite a tanker for such a passage, it would demand extremely high premiums.

DER SPIEGEL: The U.S. network CNN reported a few days ago that Iran has already laid mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

Hinote: If that has actually taken place, those mines would need to be completely cleared. That can take a very long time.

DER SPIEGEL: How long?

Hinote: It depends on how many mines of which type have been laid. Our adversaries have a wide variety of mines. Some float on the surface – those can be detected relatively easily. Others drift below the surface, and still others can move up and down. Some are anchored to the seabed, others drift freely. Some have time fuses, others have sensors that can identify what kind of target to strike. Here, too, though, it’s the same problem: If we find 99 percent of all mines but miss just one, and a supertanker hits it, that could spell catastrophe.

DER SPIEGEL: Trump claims the U.S. has taken out around 30 of Iran's mine-laying ships.

Hinote: The Iranians do not need large ships to lay mines. Based on our intelligence at the time, fighters could take a few mines into the Strait of Hormuz on a speedboat and simply toss them overboard. That would be particularly dangerous, because those mines might not be charted and could be carried off by the current.

DER SPIEGEL: How many minesweepers could the U.S. deploy?

Hinote: Last year, the Navy decommissioned several minesweepers. To my knowledge, there are now four left. Now, other vessels, known as Littoral Combat Ships, are picking up that mission, which is relatively new for them.

DER SPIEGEL: Trump says he doesn't know whether the Iranians have already laid mines. What do you think?

Hinote: Who knows? My hope is that they have laid only a few, well-charted mines at most, because they still have an interest in keeping the route open for their own oil exports. But that could change quickly, for instance if we were to destroy or seize the oil terminals on Kharg Island. The regime would then lose a large share of its capacity to sell oil to the world. And as soon as these people believe it's in their interest to close the strait completely, they will attempt to lay mines.

DER SPIEGEL: How could these security vulnerabilities in the Strait of Hormuz be addressed?

Hinote: If you want to make the Strait of Hormuz significantly safer, you have to secure the Iranian shoreline. And that requires a large-scale ground operation, one that would be highly complex. On the Iranian side, there are several islands in the strait, and on the mainland, there are villages as well as the city of Bandar Abbas, with more than 500,000 inhabitants. You would need a precise plan: Do you take the islands first? Or the shoreline? Both? How do we organize logistics. How do we supply the ground troops. How do we guarantee their safety?

DER SPIEGEL: The Iranians have one of their naval headquarters in Bandar Abbas. Urban combat in a city of half a million people could be protracted. How great is the possibility that the U.S. could bring the coastline under its control?

Hinote: It would be extremely high-risk. We do not know how the local population would react to our soldiers. We cannot predict how strongly the people of Iran still support the regime or if they would respond with hostility toward our troops. We also should not be surprised if an insurgency takes hold, one in which members of the regime or the Revolutionary Guard go underground within the civilian population and launch attacks from hiding. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is a nearly insoluble problem, one that can hardly be resolved by military means alone.

DER SPIEGEL: What other means are there?

Hinote: You have to try to convince the Iranian regime that continuing to blockade the Strait of Hormuz is a bad idea. I believe this is what President Trump is now attempting by threatening to bomb the Kharg oil terminals.

DER SPIEGEL: Could Trump's threat work?

Hinote: I am skeptical, but I cannot rule it out. So far, the Iranian regime believes it is in its interest to close the Strait of Hormuz, at least partially. It has had decades to prepare for a war, and the blockade has certainly been a key element of its playbook for years. We will see whether that playbook changes.

DER SPIEGEL: How serious would the risk of an oil disaster be if the oil terminals on Kharg were attacked?

Hinote: If the oil storage facilities were hit, there would probably be huge fires. If the underwater pipelines carrying oil from the mainland to the terminals were struck, it could lead to oil spills that would be very difficult to contain.

DER SPIEGEL: You left the Air Force in 2023. Your successors surely warned the government that the Strait of Hormuz could become a problem for the U.S. in the event of a war? Why is Washington so poorly prepared?

Hinote: I cannot speak for our government. Perhaps the thinking was that with the decapitation strike …

DER SPIEGEL: ... the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior regime figures ...

Hinote: … that the war would be over so quickly that the problem simply would not arise. I do not understand why the order to attack was given right now. I understand what the military objectives of this war are. We have set the Iranian military back significantly; it will not be able to launch attacks anytime soon. But I cannot speak to the political objectives.

DER SPIEGEL: What could other nations do to prevent further escalation in the Gulf?

Hinote: My hope is that the governments of the Gulf region will mediate between the U.S. and Israel on one side and Iran on the other – and that an agreement will be reached along the lines of: We will not attack your shipping and oil infrastructure in the Gulf if you do not attack ours. But Iran has dragged the Gulf states into the war, which makes it difficult for them to play mediator. This regime is fighting for its survival. And that is precisely why it is so dangerous: It is desperate and does not always act rationally.