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3 things to know about naval blockades as U.S. begins patrols in the Strait of Hormuz
The U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln sails alongside guided-missile destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. and dry cargo ship USNS Carl Brashear in the Arabian Sea on Feb. 6.
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Days after the U.S. Navy began blockading the Strait of Hormuz, key questions remain unanswered about how such a large-scale operation can be sustained — and history suggests naval blockades are difficult to enforce and their results are often unpredictable at best.
The White House says it wants to choke off Iran’s main source of revenue, oil exports, by cutting the country off from global maritime trade. It’s a move aimed at increasing economic pressure on Iran after weeks of U.S. strikes have failed to persuade the country’s leaders to agree to end the war on Washington’s terms.
The U.S. Middle East command, known as CENTCOM, said on Sunday that it would intercept all vessels going to and from Iranian ports and will “not impede freedom of navigation” for ships from all other Persian Gulf ports.
Meanwhile, President Trump has made clear that stopping all shipping to and from Iran is aimed at strangling Iran’s ability to export petroleum. The administration labels the pressure tactic as a blockade — though Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argues it’s more of a naval quarantine, because “the U.S. is only stopping traffic that’s coming from Iran.”
Such a tactic is simply a new facet in the long-term sanctions that the U.S. has placed on Iran, says Eric Schuck, an economics professor at Linfield University in Oregon. He says the U.S. is following the classic economic pressure tactic aimed at breaking an enemy’s economy. The way to do that is finding and cutting off “something which is nonsubstitutable, something that is so essential to their economy that everything else is going to come to a halt.” In Iran’s case, that is oil.
But will the strategy work? Here are three lessons learned from the history of naval blockades.
Blockades zap resources and are hard to enforce
For much of history, naval blockades were mostly enforced through coordinated patrols, control of key routes and strategic positioning of ships. During the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, for example, Britain imposed blockades on key French ports, which required a significant portion of the Royal Navy’s ships. And even then, some nimble French vessels — blockade runners — were still able to slip through the British screen.
Unlike the British squadrons off French ports or blockades during the 20th century, the U.S. Navy can use shipboard position beacons, satellites, drones and helicopters to locate and watch vessels coming in and out of the Strait of Hormuz, according to Steve Dunn, author of Blockade: Cruiser Warfare and the Starvation of Germany in World War One.
“Detection of vessels is much easier, with satellite, [planes and drones] and radar,” using helicopters and fast boats to send boarding parties to determine whether a ship will be allowed to pass, Dunn wrote in an email to NPR.
The Navy will likely need “six or so destroyers in rotation” to enforce the strait blockade, according to the Hudson Institute’s Clark, who is an expert in naval operations and electronic warfare. Prior to the U.S.-Iran war, an average of 138 ships passed through the strait daily. With so many vessels going through the strategic choke point, “it would be almost impossible [for the Navy] to keep up with that traffic volume,” he says.
The early months of the Ukraine war demonstrated a similar difficulty: Russia’s navy initially tried to restrict Ukrainian maritime exports from the Black Sea, using sea mines and warships to threaten commercial traffic. It resulted in a de facto partial blockade of Ukrainian grain exports, which are crucial to Ukraine’s economy. But it was “quite quickly negotiated away,” partly because Russia lacked the full military capacity needed to enforce it, according to Nicholas Mulder, a professor at Cornell University who specializes in the history of sanctions, blockades and economic warfare.
“That’s the difficult thing about blockades — you have to enforce them,” Mulder says.
The logistics of enforcing a blockade are not simple, Clark says. The blockading country’s navy must essentially pull over ships, like a traffic cop at sea. In the Arabian Sea outside the strait, the U.S. Navy “would intercept [ships] and basically get in their way and force them to turn … or take them over to a marshaling area or an anchorage in Oman,” he says.
The Navy isn’t prepared to track and stop that many ships, he says: “I don’t see the U.S. mounting a scorched-earth campaign of attacking every little vessel that tries to evade the blockade.”
They aren’t always effective
Schuck, of Linfield University, says during World War II, the Allied and Axis submarine campaigns — effectively naval blockades of shipping — provide a stark dichotomy of outcomes. The German U-boat campaign against Britain in the 1940s operated under the assumption that “if we sink everything, then it doesn’t matter. … We can cripple the British war economy,” Schuck says. However, in the end Britain was “able to make sure that the one supply line that mattered, that North Atlantic supply line,” remained open.
By contrast, the U.S. submarine campaign against Japan was “brutally effective,” targeting oil and resource flows from the Dutch East Indies to the Japanese home islands. The pressure forced Japan to shift its fleet in a way that undermined its own defense, since “they had to relocate a bunch of their fleet” just to defend their oil supply. As a result, things deteriorated on the homefront, Schuck says: By the closing months of the war, the caloric intake in Japan had dropped dramatically.
They don’t always hit their target
If history is any guide, naval blockades often have unintended consequences. “In most cases, what we’re aiming at and what we actually break are two different things,” says Schuck, who has studied the economics of naval blockades.
During World War I, the Allies imposed a naval blockade on Germany to restrict imports of strategic materials such as nitrates and phosphates used in explosives. However, these same chemicals were also critical for the production of fertilizer.
“What wound up breaking wasn’t so much the German defense industrial base — it was their agricultural sector,” Schuck says. As a result, Germany’s civilian population faced severe food shortages and widespread malnutrition in the latter years of the war.
Likewise, during the British blockade of French ports around the turn of the 19th century, French trade collapsed along with the economy.
In the case of Iran, Schuck says, its oil revenue is its lifeblood, so “there is a potential … that their food supply could be exposed from this.” But that likely depends on how long the blockade lasts or how effective it is at shutting down Iran’s commerce.
Case 1:03-cr-20685-DPG Document 8 Entered on FLSD Docket 04/29/2026 Page 18 of 26
did willfully and unlawfully, with malice aforethought, kill P.M., a human being, with premeditation and during the perpetration of, and attempt to perpetrate, sabotage, that is, the destruction of an aircraft, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 32(a).
In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1111(a), 3238 and 2.
1.
COUNT 6 Murder
18 U.S.C. §§ 1111(a), 3238 and 2
Paragraphs 1 through 34 of the General Allegations section and paragraphs 4
through 31 of the Overt Acts section of Count 1 are incorporated herein by reference.
2.
On or about February 24, 1996, in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction
of the United States, the defendants,
RAUL MODESTO CASTRO RUZ
and
LORENZO ALBERTO PEREZ-PEREZ,
did willfully and unlawfully, with malice aforethought, kill Md.1.P, a human being, with premeditation and during the perpetration of, and attempt to perpetrate, sabotage, that is, the destruction of an aircraft, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 32(a).
In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1111(a), 3238 and 2.
1.
COUNT 7 Murder
18 U.S.C. §§ 1111(a), 3238 and 2
Paragraphs 1 through 34 of the General Allegations section and paragraphs 4 through 31 of the Overt Acts section of Count 1 are incorporated herein by reference.
2.
On or about February 24, 1996, in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction
of the United States, the defendants,
18
From left to right, Mansour Kaziha, Amin Abdullah and Nadir Awad.
The Islamic Center of San Diego
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The Islamic Center of San Diego
Mansour Kaziha was the mosque’s shopkeeper known for letting children take candy for free. Nadir Awad was funny, cheerful and regularly went to the mosque to pray. And Amin Abdullah was a dedicated security guard who greeted people with a bright smile and the occasional sage life advice.
Until recently, all three men were best known for small, everyday interactions at the Islamic Center of San Diego.
But after the harrowing attack on Monday, they are now remembered for their larger-than-life acts of courage, which cost them their lives but prevented two gunmen from coming into contact with the some hundred children and staff who were inside the mosque.
“At no point [were they] hiding or running away from what’s happening,” Ghouse Mohammed, the center’s head of security, told NPR. “All three of them were heroes.”
In the aftermath, community members have united in grief and gratitude for Abdullah, Kaziha and Awad — as well as brewing frustration over how factors like anti-Muslim rhetoric both online and among elected officials led to Monday’s act of violence.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mark Remily, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego field office, described the two shooting suspects as teenagers who shared a “broad hatred” toward different races and religious groups.
“We are thoroughly investigating this case to learn everything we can and will not stop until we get to the bottom of what happened and why,” Remily said. “But we also want to learn how this happened and what we can do to stop future acts of violence.”
What we know about the victims
Last week, when Amin Abdullah’s daughter Hawaa earned her teaching credential, she said her father couldn’t make it because he was at work.
Hawaa didn’t hold it against the father of eight. Instead, she shared this anecdote at a news press conference on Tuesday as one example of how seriously her father took his job as a security guard. Other times, she said Abdullah would forego meals in order to stay at his post.
“ He wanted to save his food till after he left the job because he was afraid that if he went on his break, something bad would happen,” she said. “ He would be so vigilant in protecting the masjid, protecting the children.”
In part, Abdullah, 51, was protective by nature. But he was also shaken by the mass shooting at a New Zealand mosque in 2019, which killed 51 people, according to Ismahan Abdullahi, who grew up attending the San Diego mosque.
“ The fact that so many lives were saved because of him is not a surprise to us because that’s who he was,” she told NPR. “ He was courageous, he was sincere, he was loving, and he always put other people first, and it cost him his life.”
Mansour Kaziha had been a fixture at the Islamic Center of San Diego since the 1980s, according to Mohammed, the head of the mosque’s security. From then on, Kaziha continued to be the mosque’s handyman. The 78-year-old also managed the center’s store, often striking up conversations with customers.
“ Every child who grew in the San Diego community since the ’80s know him as uncle,” Mohammed said.
Kaziha was also known for feeding hundreds during iftar when worshippers would break their first fast during Ramadan. His lentil soup was a crowd favorite, according to Noor Abdi, a youth leader at Huda Community Center in San Diego, who grew up eating Kaziha’s cooking during Ramadan.
“ He has done so much. I can’t name the amount of things that he has his fingerprints on, and we have lost a pillar of this center,” Abdi said.
Nadir Awad, 57, lived across the street and his wife is a teacher at the school inside the center. Mohammed described him as having a “very charming personality, always smiling, always laughing.”
Although Awad didn’t have an official role at the mosque, he responded without hesitation on Monday, Mohammed said.
“ When he heard the first rounds, he just ran towards the Islamic Center to check on what’s going on and how he’s able to help,” the security chief said.
Mosque saw growing number of threats
According to Mohammed — who has overseen security at the mosque for 13 years — threats toward the mosque have increased since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and Israel’s war in Gaza. In response to Monday’s shooting, Mohammed said he hopes to see increased patrols and greater police presence at all houses of worship.
“Because we all are vulnerable,” he said. “ And we don’t want … this to happen anywhere, to any community, any faith-based organizations.”
Mohammed said the Islamic Center increased its security and began arming its officers after the 2019 attack in New Zealand. Abdullah was among the new guards who joined afterwards.
Mohammed added that the mosque has practiced active shooter drills before, but mainly in the case of a single gunman, not two.
As he grieves losing Abdullah, who he described as a close friend and colleague, Mohammed said he reviewed the surveillance footage from the shooting and that Abdullah responded exactly how he was trained.
“We did our best with protecting this place,” he said.
A Tennessee school board member who hugged a teenage girl and called her “hot” at a public meeting last month has been charged with assault, court records show.
The charge of assault — physical contact stems from an incident on April 2, when Keith Ervin put his arm around the girl, a student member of the board, hugged her from the side and told her, “God, you’re hot,” after she had just wrapped up asking questions about career and technical education.
A lawyer who could speak on Ervin’s behalf was not listed in Washington County court records, and Ervin did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday night.
During the public comment part of a May 7 meeting, the student called the adult members of the school board “cowards” for what she characterized as their “failure to act.”
“To begin, I want to address Ervin’s actions, which were not only unwelcome, but sexist and derogatory,” she said, standing at a podium in front of the members, including Ervin, who sat with his arms crossed as she spoke. “I know this because he has not behaved this way with any of our male members, nor do I believe that he ever would.”
Following public outcry, Ervin apologized for his actions. At an April 8 meeting, he said his calling the girl “hot” was intended to mean “she was on a roll” and had nothing to do with her appearance.
The board censured Ervin, a member since 2006, at that meeting. In a statement Tuesday to NBC affiliate WCYB of Bristol, it said that because Tennessee law dictates school board members are independently elected officials, it does not have the authority to remove them, including Ervin.
“The Board reiterates that Mr. Ervin’s actions do not reflect the standards, policies, or values of the school district,” the statement said. “The Board will defer to law enforcement and the judicial system for the resolution of these charges.”
In her public comments, the teen told the board members that she does not accept “your fake apologies used to protect yourselves. I do not believe that you deserve that peace of mind.”
The members did not respond to her and moved on to other meeting agenda items.
Ervin’s first court appearance is scheduled for August.
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