March 25th, 2026: Why Reopening Hormuz Won’t Be Easy & Gulf States Inch Toward War With Iran

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It's Wednesday, the 25th of March.

Welcome to the president's daily brief.

I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage.

And yes, still on the road.

All right, let's get briefed.

First up, the straight of Hormuz is effectively

shut down with hundreds of tankers sitting idle

and reopening it may be far more difficult

than Washington is letting on.

I'll explain the challenges behind getting tanker traffic

moving again in the straight.

Later in the show, golf nations weigh direct military action

against Iran, as repeated attacks,

push the region closer to a widening conflict.

Plus, Israel announces plans to take control

of parts of southern Lebanon, suggesting

a broader push against Hezbollah is underway.

And in today's back of the brief, the Taliban, remember them,

releases a US citizen after more than a year in captivity

in a rare moment of cooperation with Washington.

But first, today's PDB spotlight.

Hundreds of oil tankers are now sitting idle

on either side of the straight of Hormuz,

a critical artery, of course, with a global energy market

that has effectively been choked off

as the conflict with Iran continues.

As the New York Times reported this week,

nearly 500 vessels are currently stalled,

waiting for some reassurance that it's safe to move again.

As we've been reporting, oil prices are surging,

prices at the fuel pumps are rising, markets are rattled,

and President Trump has vowed to reopen the straight,

quote, one way or another.

But here's the reality.

The reopening, the straight of Hormuz,

is far more complicated than it may sound.

Let's start with the geography.

I mean, after all, who doesn't love a good geography lesson?

At its narrowest point, the straight is only 21 miles wide,

and its widest stretch, it's approximately 60 miles wide.

But the shipping lanes, as one inbound and one outbound,

are both only two miles wide.

Those narrow lanes funnel massive oil tankers

into predictable paths that run

uncomfortably close to Iran's coastline.

And that coastline isn't flat desert.

Its rugged, elevated terrain dotted with islands

that give Iranian forces clear lines of sight

and ideal positions for launching attacks.

It's a confined, highly controlled environment

that heavily favors the defender.

In practical terms, during a conflict,

such as what we have now, the straight more closely

resembles a maritime kill zone than a free flowing shipping

route.

And Iran doesn't need overwhelming force

to take advantage of that.

It just needs enough capability to make the waterway dangerous.

Anti-ship missiles, drones, fast-tack boats,

and importantly, sea mines all play a role.

Many of these systems are mobile, easily concealed,

and difficult to eliminate entirely,

even after sustained US and Israeli strikes.

You're not really eliminating the threat,

you're almost chasing it.

And the reality is, success isn't about stopping most attacks.

It's about stopping all of them.

Without that, these shipping and insurance industries

will continue to avoid the risk.

You can degrade Iran's capabilities.

You can strike at launch sites.

You can patrol the waters with advanced warships

and aircraft overhead.

But if even one drone gets through,

one missile finds its target, or one mine detonates

beneath the tanker, well, the entire equation resets.

Shipping halts insurance rates spike and confidence

when little there is will disappear overnight.

That's why mines in particular are such a game changer.

You don't even need to confirm that they're in the water.

The mere possibility is enough to force a response.

Clearing mines has slow, dangerous work

that can take weeks, featuring specialized ships,

constant air cover, and sailors operating

in some of the most exposed conditions.

And those mine clearing teams,

well, they become targets themselves.

So what would it actually take to reopen the strait?

At a minimum, a large-scale military operation.

Naval escorts to shepherd commercial tankers

through the choke point.

Mine sweepers clearing lanes ahead of them.

Aircraft overhead to intercept drones

and strike missile positions along the coast.

All of it coordinated, sustained, and resource intensive.

Even then, there's a bottleneck problem.

Before the conflict, roughly 80 oil and gas tankers

were moving through the strait each day.

Escort operations don't scale easily to that level.

You're moving ships in convoys, a handful at a time,

along predetermined, cleared routes.

That creates a backlog, hundreds of ships

waiting limited capacity to move them

in a system that struggles to catch up.

And here's the part they often gets overlooked.

It's not just a military decision.

Because at the end of the day, it's not the Pentagon

that decides when shipping resumes.

It's the insurance and shipping market.

Ship owners and insurers have to believe the risk is low enough

to justify sending vessels back into the strait.

And as long as Iran retains the ability

to take that one shot, that confidence will be fragile at best.

Even reopening the strait doesn't fully solve the problem.

Iran has already demonstrated that it can strike vessels

not just inside the choke point,

but in the broader gulf and into the Gulf of Oman.

That means ships may require protection

well beyond the narrow passage itself,

stretching US and allied resources even further.

And every step taken to secure the waterway

carries its own risks.

Escort missions could lead to direct confrontations.

Strikes on Iranian positions could escalate the conflict,

even limited ground operations, season-key islands, for example,

could widen the war in ways that Washington may not intend.

So yes, the US can reopen the strait of Hormuz.

It has the capability and it has the assets.

But restoring normal traffic, well,

that's a different question entirely.

All right, coming up next, Gulf states edge closer

to joining the fight against Iran while Israel

signals a major expansion of its campaign in Southern Lebanon.

I'll be right back.

Hey, Mike Baker here.

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Welcome back to the PDB.

As the war with Iran, near as the fourth week mark,

we're starting to see the posture across the Gulf

begin to change.

US allies that we're trying to stay on the sidelines,

find themselves leaning toward entering the fight.

As we've been tracking,

Gulf states had initially tried to stay out of this conflict,

but sustained Iranian missile and drone attacks

on US and regional assets such as oil infrastructure

are fine and reasoned,

even areas of major population centers like Riyadh,

well, that makes that stance increasingly untenable.

So at a certain point,

these attacks on the regime stop being something

the Gulf states can just absorb,

and that's exactly where Saudi Arabia now finds itself.

The kingdom, which had initially refused

to allow its territory or airspace

to be used for strikes on Iran,

is now quietly reversed course,

agreeing to let American forces operate

out of a King Fad airbase.

Now that's a significant shift.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister made that clear,

warning that, quote,

patience with Iranian attacks is not unlimited, end quote.

At the same time,

this isn't just happening on the military side.

The United Arab Emirates, UAE,

now finds itself opening an economic front in this war.

Authorities in the UAE have begun shutting down

Iranian-linked institutions,

including the Iranian hospital and Iranian club,

while signaling that they could freeze billions of dollars

in regime assets.

UAE officials say the measures are targeting networks

tied to the IRGC,

with the monarchy stating the quote,

certain institutions directly linked to the Iranian regime

will be closed under targeted measures.

Now, it's worth pausing on that for a second.

The UAE has long been a financial hub

for Iranian businesses,

cutting off that relationship,

impacts Iran's ability to access foreign currency

and global trade.

This move comes after the UAE has had to fend off

more than 2,000 Iranian attacks since the war began.

But I want to point out that the pressure on Gulf states

isn't just coming from what Iran has already done.

It's coming from what the regime may be signaling

that it could do next.

As I previously mentioned,

Tehran has begun asserting that it wants a role

in controlling the state of Hormuz.

As our regular listeners are aware,

Iran has effectively halted traffic

by targeting commercial vessels

while allowing select ships through.

Now, the regime has floated the idea

of charging tolls to use the straight,

effectively turning the critical waterway

into a long-term economic lever.

And for Gulf monarchies, well, that's a red line.

Because even partial control over Hormuz

would give Iran enormous influence

over global energy flows,

something that Saudi Arabia and its neighbors

are very unlikely to allow.

So it's against that backdrop.

The conversations are beginning to shift

in a more consequential way.

Over the past week,

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

has been in direct contact with President Trump,

reportedly pushing him to continue the assault on Iran

and potentially expand the effort.

NBS argues that the current US Israel campaign

presents what he describes as a quote,

historic opportunity to remake the Middle East

by eliminating the regime.

That's according to the New York Times

citing people briefed by US officials.

Sources familiar with these discussions

state that the Saudi Crown Prince

has urged Washington to target Iran's energy infrastructure.

Supposedly, NBS has even floated the possibility

that Washington deploy ground troops to seize key assets.

At the same time, Gulf states are still weighing

the risks of joining the fight.

Directly entering the war would turn them

into open combatants against a regional rival,

exposing critical infrastructure

and population centers to even more retaliation.

There's also the concern that if Trump were to scale

back the conflict, Gulf states could be left

dealing with a more aggressive Iran on their own

if they were to enter the fight,

possibly sparking a long-term war

if the regime were to remain largely intact.

I want to turn now to Southern Lebanon

where we're starting to get a better understanding

of Israel's plans on the ground

as they point to a more permanent shift

in how Jerusalem intends to eliminate

a Hezbollah along its northern frontier.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF

is now preparing to expand the territory

that it controls in Southern Lebanon

and it's doing so with a very specific line in mind.

That would be the Latani River.

Now we've talked about this specific geographic marker

before the river at its closest point

sits only a few miles from Israel's northern border

and at its farthest stretches about 20 miles

into Lebanese territory.

For years, the Latani has effectively served as a buffer

between Israel and Hezbollah.

Now Katz is signaling that Israel

is preparing to hold everything south of the Latani,

not as a temporary measure,

but as part of a longer-term security posture.

He said, quote,

hundreds of thousands of residents of Southern Lebanon

who were evacuated will not return south

of the Latani River until the security of northern Israel

is assured end quote.

So that's a clear, if not the clearest indication,

that Israel is no longer just trying to push Hezbollah

back from the border,

but to prevent Iran's strongest proxy

from reestablishing itself in the area altogether.

On the ground, we've been tracking Israeli forces

already shaping that reality.

Katz says the military has bombed at least five bridges

along the Latani.

Rouse, he says,

Hezbollah uses to move weapons

and reinforcements into the fight.

The moves by the IDF aim at cutting off Hezbollah's ability

to flow its terrorist forces into Southern Lebanon

and reconstitute along Israel's northern edge.

And of course, this didn't begin with the current operation.

As I've mentioned, following the last ceasefire in late 2024,

Israeli forces had established five outposts

inside Southern Lebanon near the border.

What's happening now builds on that footprint,

expanding beyond those limited positions

and moving towards something that looks much closer

to sustained territorial control.

Inside Jerusalem's government,

there is pressure to go even further.

The hardline Israeli finance minister

has called for the Latani River to become

not just Israel's new security buffer,

but rather its northern boundary,

saying, quote,

the current campaign in Lebanon

must end with a fundamental change, end quote.

And that reflects the broader view inside parts

of the Israeli leadership

that this moment isn't just about responding to Hezbollah attacks,

but redrawing the map permanently.

That idea is somewhat visible

and how the current Israeli military push

in Southern Lebanon is actually being carried out.

The operation began earlier this month.

After Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel

in solidarity with Iran,

following the US-Israeli strikes on Tehran.

Since then, Israeli forces have pushed into Lebanon,

carrying out extensive their strikes across the country,

including in Beirut,

targeting Hezbollah commanders,

fighters and infrastructure

tied to the terror group's operations.

At the same time,

Kat says the IDF is systematically targeting border villages

using what he described as the quote Rafa model.

That's a reference to IDF operations in Gaza

where entire areas were cleared and turned to rubble

to deny Hamas the ability to reuse those positions.

All right, coming up next in the back of the brief,

the Taliban releases a detained American

after more than a year in custody.

More on that when we come back.

Hey, Mike Baker here.

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In today's back of the brief,

a rare bit of good news out of Afghanistan,

where the Taliban has released an American citizen

after more than a year in detention.

But as is often the case in situations like this,

the story is a bit more complicated than it first appears.

Dennis Coil, a 64-year-old American academic,

had been held by the Taliban since January of 2025,

reportedly pulled from his home in Kabul

and kept without formal charges,

much of that time and near solitary conditions.

This week, the Taliban officials announced his release,

describing it as a pardon tied to the Eid holiday

and granted it the request of his family.

The U.S. government confirmed Coil's release,

crediting a combination of diplomatic efforts

and persistent advocacy from his family.

Behind the scenes intermediaries,

including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,

helped facilitate the negotiations,

an important reminder that,

with no formal diplomatic relationship

between Washington and the Taliban,

these kind of talks have to happen indirectly,

often quietly and over extended periods of time.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the release a positive step,

but he also made clear that this isn't the end of the story.

Other Americans are still being held by the Taliban

and U.S. officials continue to accuse the group

of what they describe as, quote, hostage diplomacy,

detaining foreign nationals as leverage and negotiations.

That framing is important,

because while the Taliban is presenting this

as a goodwill gesture tied to a religious holiday,

Washington sees a broader pattern,

one that mirrors tactics used by other adversaries,

including Iran and Russia.

And that, my friends, is the president's daily brief

for Wednesday, the 25th of March.

Now, if you have any questions or comments,

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I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today

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Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.