The Iran war has choked off the Strait of Hormuz—an off-Iran waterway that serves as a crucial oil and gas passageway from the Persian Gulf—at a point when governments are already working through what it would take to get shipping moving again. The Associated Press reported that the disruption has contributed to rising gasoline prices, and that Macron is now trying to coordinate an international blueprint for reopening the strait once fighting winds down.
Macron is working to unblock the energy chokepoint “when circumstances permit,” according to the AP report, and he has raised the idea of using warships to escort tankers and container vessels through the narrow passage when the intensity of fighting is lower. Former naval officers who have dealt with the Hormuz route said that the timing and conditions would determine whether escort plans can keep ships afloat and moving—or instead expose them to attack in lanes with limited room to maneuver.
Pascal Ausseur, a French navy retired vice admiral, said that in the current fight, putting warships or even civilian vessels into the Strait of Hormuz would be reckless. “In today’s context, sending warships or civilian vessels into the Strait of Hormuz would be suicidal,” Ausseur told the AP. He added that a ceasefire with Iran would change the risk calculus, saying it would shift from “suicidal to dangerous,” and at that point “military ships could be deployed” and escort operations could begin.
Ausseur’s warning focused on how escorts would operate while combat continues. He and other former officers emphasized that the strait’s geography constrains movement, meaning ships could become vulnerable targets if foreign naval forces attempted to force a reopening before hostilities stopped. With war raging, the AP report said, Hormuz is not simply a scaled-up version of other contested waterways—it presents distinct operational constraints because of where and how ships must transit.
French officials and former commanders have pointed to existing experience in the region’s earlier maritime threat environment as one building block for any future escort effort. The AP reported that French, American, British and other naval crews already have experience fighting off missiles and drones in the Red Sea, where attacks launched by Iran-backed Houthi rebels disrupted trade between November 2023 and January 2025. In that campaign, the AP said, Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two ships and killing four sailors, and the disruptions reduced trade flows.
Jérôme Henry, the commander of the container ship Alsace when a French frigate downed three ballistic missiles in the Red Sea in 2024, told the AP that facing those strikes repeatedly was exhausting. “There were repeated attacks, either by drones or missiles,” Henry said in an interview. “The crew didn’t get much sleep.” The AP report also quoted Michel Olhagaray, a retired French vice admiral and former head of France’s center for higher military studies, saying navies learned from their Red Sea cooperation and have also drawn lessons from Ukraine’s experiences facing Russian barrages of missiles and drones.
Olhagaray said the Red Sea experience could help coalition navies operate with “fairly refined know-how” and coordination, adding that it was “extremely important.” He said that the approach could allow forces to deploy to the region with more effective cooperation. Olhagaray also said he commanded a French frigate that patrolled the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, underscoring that the planning challenges he described are not theoretical.
Even so, Olhagaray warned that Hormuz would demand more than transferring lessons from other theaters. The AP report said Iran is militarily far better equipped than the Houthi proxies that fought in the Red Sea and that Iran can reach the strait and its approaches with anti-ship cruise missiles developed off Chinese-made weapons. It said Iran also can target shipping with longer-range missiles, drones, fast attack craft and naval mines, and it cited U.S. strikes on mine-laying Iranian vessels in the latest conflict as an illustration of the hazard.
With that threat profile, Olhagaray told the AP that the Hormuz passage is “very, very dangerous,” and he said risks for shipping are “much greater” than in the Red Sea against the Houthis. “The means to counter this threat must be far more substantial and far more effective,” he said. He added that before the heat can decrease, most of the offensive installations on land in Iran would have to be eliminated and that forces would require constant monitoring, patrols, extremely close surveillance and a very high level of intelligence to determine whether tankers could transit even alongside military escorts. He concluded, “That will not happen at all — not at all — in the near future.”
Beyond naval tactics, the AP report highlighted a second constraint: persuading insurers and commercial operators that transit through Hormuz is feasible again. Experts cited the challenge of rebuilding confidence after premiums for shipping in the strait surged to levels that France’s transport minister described as “insane,” creating what the AP called a “big problem” for shippers. Ausseur, now a director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies, said maritime traffic is a business and that if insurance costs prevent companies from making a profit, they will not send ships through the area.
Insurance broker Marcus Baker, global head of marine, cargo and logistics for Marsh Risk, told the AP that rates for oil tankers seeking to transit Hormuz are many times higher than they were before the war and are approaching levels charged for ships carrying grain from Ukraine during the Russia conflict. Baker said potential naval escorts “would be helpful,” and he pointed to the historical role of escorts in conflicts as a factor that could give insurers more confidence that vessels would face a greater degree of safety.