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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.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional district map favored by Republicans.
The court, in an unsigned order, overturned a three-judge district court panel that found that the map is “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.” The court’s three liberals publicly dissented.
The ruling means that Alabama’s 2026 midterm elections will feature six Republican-leaning districts and one Democratic-leaning one, as opposed to a map with only five safe Republican seats. Democrat Shomari Figures, who represents Alabama’s Second District, will likely lose his seat as a result of the high court’s ruling.
The story of Alabama’s congressional map is long and tortured. It began in 2021, when the state implemented a new map to account for population changes in the census. The map featured only one majority-black district out of seven, even though the state is more than one-quarter Black.
Voters immediately sued, claiming the map illegally diluted minority votes in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. Lower court judges agreed, ruling that the state must draw a map with two districts where Black voters have a realistic chance of electing their candidate of choice. The Supreme Court more than once has ordered Alabama to draw a compliant map.
But the state has refused and instead continued to litigate the case. On Tuesday, that tactic paid off.
What changed? In April, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority all but gutted what remains of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that states cannot purposefully draw districts that are majority-minority.
Alabama then asked the high court to reinstate the state’s old map, under the theory that this new ruling meant that it was permissible to use a map with only one majority-Black district. In an unsigned, unexplained order in May, the high court essentially reversed its previous opinions, and allowed Alabama to use the old map for the upcoming midterm elections.
This set off a flurry of activity in Alabama. By the time the Supreme Court issued its May order, absentee balloting had already begun, using the court-drawn map. So Republican Governor Kay Ivey cancelled elections and scheduled a special primary for August for the affected congressional races.
The case, however, was not over.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court had ordered a lower court panel to continue evaluating Alabama’s map in light of its recent Voting Rights Act decision. And just 15 days after that order, the panel, composed of three Republican judges—two of them Trump appointees—concluded unanimously that even under the Supreme Court’s new standards, the plan for a single black district was “intentionally discriminatory.”
So, once again, Alabama returned to the Supreme Court, arguing that the map was partisan, not racially discriminatory. In short, that the Republican legislature simply drew the map to elect more Republicans. And that under the Supreme Court’s new interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, the GOP map should be allowed to stand.
The court’s conservative agreed, writing that the lower court “did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith.”
The court’s three liberals publicly dissented, castigating the conservative majority for failing to abide by its 2006 decision in the case of Purcell v. Gonzalez. That decision declared that courts should not change election rules too close to an election.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, said the court “debases the democratic process” and “corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.”
Tuesday’s decision is the latest in a series of Supreme Court rulings that could well reshape the 2026 midterm elections, making it much harder for Democrats to prevail.
Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 3 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “weak,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown. The New York Times
A minor, 3.7-magnitude earthquake struck in the San Francisco Bay Area on Tuesday, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The temblor happened at 9:44 a.m. Pacific time about 4 miles southeast of Cloverdale, Calif., data from the agency shows.
U.S.G.S. data earlier reported that the magnitude was 3.6.
As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.
Subsequent quakes have been reported in the same area. Such temblors are typically aftershocks caused by minor adjustments along the portion of a fault that slipped at the time of the initial earthquake.
Aftershocks detected
Quakes and aftershocks within 100 miles
Aftershocks can occur days, weeks or even years after the first earthquake. These events can be of equal or larger magnitude to the initial earthquake, and they can continue to affect already damaged locations.
The New York Times When quakes and aftershocks occurred
Sources: United States Geological Survey (epicenter, aftershocks, shake intensity); LandScan via Oak Ridge National Laboratory (population density) | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Pacific time. Shake data is as of Tuesday, June 2 at 12:59 p.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Tuesday, June 2 at 1:59 p.m. Eastern.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. The United States continues to lead the world in Artificial Intelligence (AI) because of the enormous talent and innovation of our AI industry, and because we refuse to stifle this innovation with overly burdensome regulation. My Administration has unleashed tremendous technological growth and economic investment in AI by slashing the bureaucratic constraints that the prior administration placed on America’s AI developers and researchers, and by instead encouraging AI innovation and accelerating responsible AI adoption across government and industry.
Advanced AI capabilities make our Nation stronger, but also introduce new national security considerations that require coordinated action across executive departments and agencies (agencies), and components. As these capabilities evolve, my Administration will continue to work closely with industry to ensure that the best and most secure technology is deployed rapidly to confront any and all threats to our country. We will continue to lead an America First cybersecurity effort that enhances both our national security and our global AI dominance.
It is the policy of the United States to promote AI innovation and security by working collaboratively with the private sector to modernize government and private sector information systems and harden them against external threats; to protect American ingenuity and intellectual property from exploitation and theft by adversaries; and to cultivate America’s advanced AI-enabled capabilities.
Sec. 2. Upgrading American Systems for Advanced AI. (a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Committee on National Security Systems shall prioritize the cyber defense of National Security Systems, as defined in 44 U.S.C. 3552(b)(6)(A), by taking appropriate and expeditious action consistent with the purpose of this order.
(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of War shall prioritize the cyber defense of Department of War information systems by taking appropriate and expeditious action consistent with the purpose of this order.
(c) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Homeland Security, through the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and the National Cyber Director, shall release Binding Operational Directives and other guidance as appropriate to:
(i) expedite and prioritize the cyber defense of civilian Federal Government information systems in order to protect our Nation’s vital functions;
(ii) establish or expand Federal programs and cybersecurity services that enhance AI-enabled defensive tools; and
(iii) facilitate access to cybersecurity tools and services including, where appropriate, covered frontier models for agencies, State and local authorities, and operators of critical infrastructure such as rural hospitals, community banks, and local utilities.
(d) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the National Cyber Director, the Secretary of War, through the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Secretary of Homeland Security, through the Director of CISA, shall form an AI cybersecurity clearinghouse, in voluntary collaboration with the AI industry and operators of critical infrastructure, that coordinates and deconflicts scanning for software vulnerabilities, discovers and validates such vulnerabilities, and coordinates and prioritizes remediation and distribution of vulnerability patches.
(e) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Director of OMB, in coordination with the National Cyber Director and the Director of CISA, shall determine whether any Federal grant programs have available and relevant funding that can be directed toward applicants developing advanced AI vulnerability detection.
(f) Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall expand the United States Tech Force Information Cybersecurity Specialist hiring and placement pathways.
Sec. 3. Secure Frontier Model Deployment. Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, through the Director of NSA, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, through the Director of CISA, in consultation with the White House Chief of Staff, through the National Cyber Director, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), and the Secretary of Commerce, through the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and in coordination with other agencies, as appropriate, shall:
(a) develop and maintain a classified benchmarking process to assess the advanced cyber capabilities of AI models and determine the threshold at which an AI model should be designated a “covered frontier model” for the purposes of this order, sharing such assessments with AI developers and researchers as appropriate. Such a determination shall be made by the Director of NSA, in consultation with the National Cyber Director, the APST, the Director of CISA, and other representatives of the Department of War, as appropriate.
(b) design a voluntary framework with AI developers through which developers would be able to:
(i) engage the Federal Government to determine whether model(s) under development meet the designation of “covered frontier model”;
(ii) provide the Federal Government with access to covered frontier models, subject to appropriate confidentiality, cybersecurity, insider-risk, and intellectual-property protection, use, and nondisclosure requirements, for a period of up to 30 days before they plan to release such models to other trusted partners; and
(iii) collaborate with the Federal Government to select trusted partners that will have early access to covered frontier models to promote secure innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.
(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models.
Sec. 4. Protection Against Criminal Actors. The Attorney General shall prioritize the enforcement of 18 U.S.C. 1028, 18 U.S.C. 1030, 18 U.S.C. 1343, and all other applicable Federal criminal laws against anyone who utilizes AI to illegally access or damage a computer without authorization, or who utilizes AI while engaged in such illegal access to further any other crime. This includes breaching any public or private information technology system, or employing AI agents to unlawfully access data or information that is subsequently used for a criminal or unlawful purpose.
Sec. 5. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
(d) The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of War.
DONALD J. TRUMP
THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 2, 2026.
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