Rubio Confirms a US Blockade of Hormuz, Qatar's Gas Chokepoint

The United States is running a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators this week, confirming in plain terms that Washington has closed the world's most important energy chokepoint to Iran, the same narrow channel through which nearly all of Qatar's gas reaches the world.

Rubio's account came at his June 2 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his first testimony since the United States went to war with Iran. He told the panel that a ceasefire had included an Iranian commitment to reopen the strait, and that when Tehran did not follow through, President Trump decided to close it to Iranian traffic in return.

"We're going to shut down the straits for them"

"We can't have a world in which only Iranian ships get through the straits," Rubio said. "So if they're going to shut down the straits for everybody, we're going to shut down the straits for them. And we have done that through a very effective blockade," he added, citing also "the seizure of sanctioned ships in the Indo-Pacific." The cost to Iran, he said, runs to "hundreds of millions of dollars" a day in lost revenue.

Qatar's gas runs through the same gate

What Rubio did not mention is who else depends on that gate. Roughly a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz, and Qatar, the largest LNG exporter on earth, has no other sea route out. Every cargo loaded at Ras Laffan must thread the same channel, barely 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest, that Washington now says it is blockading.

On the committee, the strain was already showing. "Why does the Strait of Hormuz remain closed? Why is gas up $1.50?" one senator asked.

The ally as collateral

The picture is an uncomfortable one for Doha. Qatar hosts Al Udeid Air Base, the forward headquarters of US Central Command and the largest American military installation in the Middle East, even as the strategy it helps enable squeezes the maritime artery its own economy is built on. A blockade aimed at Tehran does not distinguish easily between Iranian oil and Qatari gas when both must pass through the same water.

Qatari tankers have so far kept testing the route, and Doha has leaned on its role as mediator to keep channels open. But Rubio's testimony made explicit what official accounts had left vague. The strait is not simply closed by Iran. It is being held shut, by design, by Iran's adversary and Qatar's ally at the same time.