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The U.S. and Israel are locked into a longer-than-expected war that may extend through April before Iran’s military is sufficiently neutered to begin shifting toward a “defensive” posture and reopening oil and gas flows to a world thirsting for cheaper energy, military and energy analysts said.

With or without a ceasefire agreement and likely short of regime change, the main military objective is to stay the course until Iran is exhausted of much of its remaining missile, drone, and fast-boat inventories, meaning it can no longer effectively block tankers from the critical Strait of Hormuz choke point, they said.

President Donald Trump hinted at it on Friday, when he posted on social media that he is considering “winding down” military operations in the Mideast, saying the U.S. is near its objectives of degrading Iran’s missile capability, defense industrial base, armed forces, and nuclear program.

The war has caused oil prices to surge about 75% since the beginning of the year, threatening inflationary spikes worldwide and regional energy shortages. The campaign has already cost the U.S. many billions of dollars, and the Pentagon has request $200 billion more. Much of the Iranian leadership is killed and many of its military supply chains are decimated. But that hasn’t stopped Israel from escalating matters by targeting Iran’s domestic power supplies through its South Pars gas field—an action Trump criticized, asking Israel to stop hitting oil and gas production—or Iran responding by attacking the energy infrastructure of its Gulf neighbors, most notably Qatar’s liquefied natural gas facilities.

So what’s the end game now that the war has concluded its third week? After all, the conflict is almost certainly extending beyond the initial four weeks that Trump cited. And limited operations for U.S. boots on the ground remain on the table, whether to seize nuclear sites or Iran’s oil-exporting hub, Kharg Island.

“You can leave the regime intact but, if it is neutralized militarily, President Trump could claim that the Iranian military does not pose a threat to shipping through the strait. That would certainly be an important victory,” said Thierry Wizman, a top economic strategist for the Macquarie Group.

The U.S. is currently targeting Iranian fast-attack vessels and drones near the strait, relying on A-10 Warthog fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters.

“If the U.S. claims victory and there is no formal surrender, and then you have an attack by Iran on a [tanker] vessel, then that would look very bad for the U.S.,” Wizman said, warning of a too-early “mission accomplished” celebration. “It really must be airtight. That’s why, in the absence of a formal agreement, this can last a long, long time because you have to basically get everything that’s out there.”

But an end is within reach, even if the timeline is extended an extra month or so, said Richard Goldberg, senior advisor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies neoconservative think tank.

“Whether it’s four weeks or eight weeks—whatever is planned—this is not an endless conflict,” said Goldberg, who previously served as Iranian counteroffensive director on Trump’s National Security Council. “We would not want to stop until they can’t keep opening fire. Then we can manage the situation with or without a ceasefire. Otherwise, Iran has a victory of sorts where they can continue to extort the West and threaten to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.”

In the meantime, the narrow passageway controlling 20% of the world’s oil and exported natural gas remains effectively closed, representing the greatest energy supply shock ever, although some oil barrels are rerouted and Iran is allowing a few select tankers through. When and if the strait is reopened, it will take months to resume normal oil flows and, although prices will dip from their highs, they would remain elevated because of the heightened risks and insurance costs. And nearly 20% of Qatar’s gas-exporting facilities will remain offline with an announced repair timeline of three to five years.

“Every day that passes, your supply shock is getting wider and wider, and to get out of that is getting harder and harder,” said Sara Hakim, director of natural gas for ICF energy consultants.

Differing opinions

The U.S. and Israel could have continued negotiations toward a nuclear compromise, but they opted for a surprise strike on the Iranian leadership on Feb. 28, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many others. His son now holds the same role.

Since then, the conflict has escalated beyond most expectations to include the entire Gulf region and the stoppage of energy flows, dramatically disrupting the global economy, said Jim Krane, energy fellow and Middle East expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

“It would take a lot of spin at this point to still call it a victory. It would require the U.S. to eat some crow really,” he said. “The U.S. is supposed to be the Gulf’s security provider, not the instigator of regional warfare that stops the oil flow.”

The “energy-for-security” relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia along with much of the region dates back 80 years to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Now we don’t have either one. We don’t have any oil; we don’t have any security,” Krane pointed out. “This is a 180-degree reversal of its original intent. It’s getting hard to watch.”

It will now take years to rebuild both the relationships with the Gulf states and to rebuild the damaged energy facilities, he added.

And Israel killing Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was acting as a day-to-day leader for Iran during the war, made a negotiated peace more difficult as the militant Revolutionary Guard takes more control. Krane likened Larijani to Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, now the interim president after the U.S. arrested former leader Nicolás Maduro in January.

“He had a pretty good track record of negotiating in good faith, so killing him I think was a big mistake. That makes it a lot harder,” Krane said of Larijani. “I don’t see an easy off-ramp.”

Since then, Trump has lashed out at allies as “cowards” for not assisting militarily in reopening the strait, calling NATO a “paper tiger” without the U.S. And Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran would show “zero restraint” if its energy infrastructure was struck again.

In the meantime, the White House is pulling every lever to keep prices, especially prices at the pump, from getting out of control. There’s the 172 million barrels of oil slated for release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve—almost half of the 400 million barrels scheduled to come out of reserves worldwide—the loosening of sanctions on Russian oil, the potential loosening on waterborne Iranian crude, the 60-day Jones Act waiver to allow for foreign tankers to move oil and products domestically, and more.

Still, the U.S. average for the cost of a gallon of regular unleaded oil has spiked 45% from January lows and counting, even though U.S. oil prices remain lower than the rest of the world and U.S. natural gas costs are largely unchanged. The national average could exceed $4.00 a gallon by the end of the weekend.

Are boots needed?

Then there’s the question of whether the war will require so-called boots on the ground in Iran, not for a full ground invasion, but for select, but dangerous, special operations. Trump has said he does not want to deploy troops on the ground in Iran, but he’s left some wiggle room.

“There’s a tangential view you can’t do all this by air power. At some point you may have to put boots on the ground. Maybe that’s the case,” Wizman said.

Troops could be used selectively on the shoreline of the Strait of Hormuz, at nuclear sites, or even on Iran’s Kharg Island, which the U.S. has already bombed but avoided hitting energy infrastructure.

Iran’s missile and drone defenses would need to be further crippled first, Goldberg said. “If you were to put boots on the ground on Kharg, they’d be vulnerable to drones, they’d be vulnerable to other threats,” he said. “One missile into the power plant shuts down the export terminal without destroying the oil. That to me seems like a better solution.”

Regardless, the top priority is reopening the Strait of Hormuz and safely escorting tankers through.

“If you’re able to conduct the escort missions and defeat any threats that are still posed by the regime, then the [Iranian] regime probably has lost at that point,” Goldberg said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As the Iran war enters its fourth week, much of its cost is being borne by countries that had nothing to do with starting it. 

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz soon after the U.S. and Israel launched their strikes on the country, choking the maritime artery through which nearly all of the Persian Gulf’s oil and natural gas flow. The closure has strangled shipments from major energy exporters—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and poses an existential threat to Asia, a region that relies on imported energy.

“Asia is at the heart of this drama, in that it is the chief area…of collateral damage,” said Columbia University historian Adam Tooze at the Jefferies Asia Forum in Hong Kong this week.

The Iran war threatens to become an inflationary shock targeted at the world’s growth engine. For three decades, governments turned to rate cuts and looser fiscal policy when faced with a crisis. This time, those tools may no longer work.

Fiscal and monetary policy was already loosening across much of the world economy. “Coming into the current crisis with Iran…it was pretty obvious, whether Japan, whether Europe, whether the United States, whether the UK, that we were very much in an inflationary boom,” Louis-Vincent Gave, CEO of Gavekal Research, told conference attendees.

But now an energy supply shock threatens to push inflation higher while slowing growth: what Gave calls an inflationary bust, and what people may better know as stagflation.

Roughly 84% of crude that transits Hormuz goes to Asia, while the U.S. now imports little through the strait. That asymmetry shows up in prices: West Texas Intermediate is near $100 a barrel, while Dubai crude has jumped past $160.

Natural gas has also been hit. Iran has struck key infrastructure in Qatar, which accounts for roughly 20% of global liquefied natural gas supply. On Thuesday, QatarEnergy declared force majeure on deliveries after Iranian drone and missile strikes on the Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest LNG export hub.

‘A perfect dilemma’

Governments across the region have moved quickly to limit the damage, deploying a mix of price caps, rationing, and stockpile releases.

South Korea imposed a fuel price cap, the first in 30 years. Seoul is urgently seeking oil supplies that bypass Hormuz and accelerating a longer-term shift toward nuclear power generation.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy grew by just 1.0%—the worst in five years and below the 2.0% annual rate that Peter Kim, senior managing director at KB Securities, described as the minimum for political legitimacy in a sideline interview.

“An oil price shock, with a weak currency and a central bank that can’t cut because of inflation pressure? That could really jeopardize that 2% target,” Kim warned in an interview with Fortune.

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi started the release of roughly 80 million barrels from the country’s petroleum reserves on Monday. Tokyo faces not only an energy crisis but a diplomatic one. U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly pressed allies like Japan to contribute to any coalition to reopen the strait, citing their dependence on the strait for energy. Takaichi, for now, has cited constitutional limits on the use of force as a reason for Japan’s hesitance to send ships. 

“It’s a perfect dilemma,” said Ken Jimbo, a professor of international relations at Keio University to Fortune. “We don’t wish to be too hostile to the United States, because there’s a quid pro quo type of Trump psychology: I defend you. Why do you not defend me?”​

Governments can’t ‘subsidize forever’

Emerging markets are absorbing the shock in more desperate ways. Thailand, which imports 70% of its oil, has capped diesel prices, instructed officials to work from home, and urged citizens to wear short-sleeved shirts.

“If the price of global crude oil increases, our GDP automatically decreases,” said Tanawat Ruenbanterng, head of institutional research at Tisco Securities, to Fortune. A weaker baht and higher bond yields give Bangkok even less fiscal room to respond. “Because of limited fiscal space, they could not subsidize forever,” Tanawat said. 

Thailand isn’t alone in needing to impose emergency measures. Indonesia is shielding retail pump prices ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, even as that threatens to blow through Jakarta’s fuel subsidy budget of 381 trillion rupiah ($22.6 billion). Bangladesh has imposed daily fuel purchase limits and closed universities early; Sri Lanka has declared Wednesdays a holiday to conserve fuel. 

Concern is spreading to advanced economies too: On March 20, the International Energy Agency warned its member economies, like Australia and the UK, to consider carpooling or working from home to save fuel. 

What happens next?

China, the world’s largest oil importer, banned the export of diesel, gasoline, and aviation fuel until at least the end of March to pre-empt domestic shortages. The ban is forcing Southeast Asian buyers who relied on Chinese fuel exports to scramble for alternatives.

That may push countries back to a fuel that many environmentalists hoped would be left behind: coal. Countries like South Korea, Thailand, and Bangladesh are quickly ramping up coal power generation to make up for halted LNG imports. 

“Coal is, and remains, the cheapest way to produce electricity,” Gave told the Jefferies audience, “if you don’t care, and if you don’t price the environmental costs.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Elon Musk defrauded Twitter Inc. investors when he disparaged the company in 2022 in an effort to buy the social media platform for a lower price than his original $44 billion bid, a jury concluded. 

Jurors in federal court in San Francisco found Friday that Musk intentionally misled Twitter shareholders when he tweeted that the social network — now called X — had too many fake accounts and tried to back out of the deal. The jury rejected two of the four fraud claims.

The eight-member panel calculated how much Musk’s statements drove down the company’s stock price for each trading day over a period of about five months. The amount of damages he must pay to individual investors — which could total hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars — will be determined at a later date when shareholders submit claims.

The verdict, following about three days of deliberations, marks a rare defeat in court for the world’s richest person, who has been dubbed “Teflon Elon” for his track record of winning high-stakes legal battles that many expected him to lose. 

He prevailed in a 2023 trial over Tesla Inc. investors’ allegations that he misled them in a tweet five years earlier saying he had “funding secured” to take the electric car-maker private. Musk is a co-founder of Tesla and its chief executive officer.

Mark Molumphy, a lawyer for the investors, said after the verdict he thinks the damages will amount to $2.6 billion. But even an award that high wouldn’t dent Musk’s net worth, which was $661.1 billion on Friday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“This case is much bigger than Twitter, this case goes right to the heart of Wall Street and what’s been going on in recent years,” said Joseph Cotchett, Molumphy’s partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy LLP. “It’s a great example of what you cannot do to the average investor.”

Musk’s lawyers declined to comment in the courtroom. Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In federal court, the losing side can appeal.

The jurors heard about two weeks of live testimony from Musk and top Twitter executives at the time, who recalled the turbulent six-month period in 2022 when the serial entrepreneur flip-flopped over whether he would buy the platform, resulting in hard-fought litigation with Twitter’s board of directors to force him to follow through.

The investors claimed that Musk’s social media posts and public statements — including a May 13, 2022, tweet stating the deal was “temporarily on hold” pending a review of the number of bots counted as Twitter users — was actually part of a deliberate plan to drive down the company’s stock price so he could renegotiate at a better price.

Molumphy told the jury in his closing argument Tuesday that Musk’s tweets “were not some innocent mistakes, some stupid tweet that he didn’t consider.”

“They were intentional, deliberate, and devised to convey to investors that Twitter was overrun with spam,” Molumphy said.

Musk took the stand for a whole day, and part of a second, and largely stayed on script in telling the jury he believed that the ex-Twitter executives, including Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, lied to him and in public financial statements about the prevalence on the platform of spam and fake accounts, known as bots.

“Of course people were talking about a renegotiation once this bot issue came up,” Musk’s attorney, Michael Lifrak of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, told the jury in his closing argument. “There was no secret about that.”

The stock remained volatile for several months while Musk waffled on following through with the deal, wiping away billions of dollars in Twitter’s market value. When Twitter sued Musk in Delaware for reneging on the purchase in July 2022, the shares reached a low of $32.52, 40% less than Musk’s buyout price. 

Musk testified that he only agreed to do the deal at the original price of $54.20 per share because he believed the Delaware judge overseeing Twitter’s lawsuit was biased against him.

The billionaire argued that his tweet at the center of the lawsuit was very different from walking away from the deal entirely. “I’m not saying I’m not going to do the deal,” he told the jury. “At no point did I say the deal was canceled.”

But Musk acknowledged under questioning from a lawyer for investors that the “temporarily on hold” post was a mistake. “It may not be my wisest tweet,” he said. “I don’t know if I would call it my stupidest. But if it led to this trial it probably qualifies as such.” 

The case is Pampena v. Musk, 22-cv-05937, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Three weeks into the Iran war, small businesses are starting to feel the pressure of the conflict, and experts say the worst may still be yet to come. 

Following the initial strikes on Iran in late February, U.S. businesses have been directly affected by the war in the form of shipping disruptions and skyrocketing oil prices, which have led to higher gas prices. 

These obstacles come as small businesses have over the past year dealt with the whipsaw of President Trump’s tariff policies. Sweeping tariffs on goods from China, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, among others, have driven up input costs and squeezed profit margins for small business owners who often lack the purchasing power and legal resources of large corporations. 

Unlike larger corporations who, at least in the short term, can absorb higher costs and shipping upheaval caused by the Iran war, smaller businesses are especially at risk, said Brett Massimino, an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s business school and chair of the department of supply chain management and analytics. 

“Small businesses, they don’t have the margins or the reserves to really absorb those kinds of cost increases,” he told Fortune. “They’re faced with a dilemma of, do they try to expedite some of the shipments that might be delayed right now, or do they deal with the shortages.”

If the Iran war stretches on, small businesses could start to feel the effects in as soon as two months as they run out of reserves or look to renew contracts at potentially higher prices. Trump has repeatedly insisted he could stop the war “right now” having seen Iran’s military crippled, as he told MS Now Friday. Still, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this week requested an extra $200 billion for the war effort.  

The price of Brent crude hit a brief high of $119 a barrel Thursday, before retreating Friday, as Iran continued to threaten, and at times strike, ships passing through the Hormuz Strait, through which 20% of the world’s oil supply flows.

At the same time, the threat of attacks has also led shipping company Maersk to halt all vessel crossings through the strait. In early March about 147 container ships in the area also had to take refuge after getting stuck in the Persian Gulf.

‘Everything has gone up’

Yet, while these events may feel half a world away for Americans, they have already translated into real price increases at home for many homegrown small businesses. 

Travis Maderia, a fourth generation lobster fisherman and cofounder of the direct-to-consumer seafood company Lobster Boys, told Fortune the fishermen that catch lobster for the business in the cold North Atlantic water near Nova Scotia, Canada, are facing rising costs. On Friday, he said one fisherman told him gas prices have increased 60 cents per liter, or more than $2 per gallon.

The result? Maderia has needed to shell out more per pound of lobster to the fishermen than he would during the same season any other year—$17 per pound, compared to $13 or $14 per pound normally—which raises his operating costs. 

Jet fuel price increase and more demand for air freight thanks to the shift from risky cargo ships have also led airlines to raise their prices and increase shipping costs.

For Lobster Boys, these increases have meant higher prices for shipping their products to the continental U.S.—increases that Maderia said the company has had to pass on to the restaurants and grocery stores they sell to. And yet, when these restaurants pass the higher prices onto their own customers, they also see a slump in demand, which means fewer orders for Maderia’s company. 

“Everything has gone up, unfortunately, and customers are not liking it,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump said he was considering “winding down” US military efforts against Iran, saying that the US was close to achieving its objectives as the conflict, which has roiled financial markets and the region, nears a fourth week.

“We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East,” Trump said in a social-media post on Friday. He cast those objectives as “Completely degrading” Iran’s missile capabilities, “destroying” the country’s defense industrial base, eliminating their navy and air force, never allowing Tehran to get close to “Nuclear Capability” and protecting Middle Eastern allies.

Trump’s comments came shortly after he ruled out a ceasefire and kept the door open to deploying ground troops, highlighting how the president continues to send wildly divergent signals about his objectives and plans for the US and Israeli war on Iran.

It is also unclear how Iran would respond to any unilateral decision by the US to pause strikes after recent attacks that targeted the country’s energy infrastructure and killed more high-profile officials, including security chief Ali Larijani. Iranian officials have become reluctant to even discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz as Tehran continues to launch retaliatory strikes at Gulf Arab neighbors. 

Trump also addressed the strait, a critical waterway that carries roughly a fifth of global oil and natural gas flows and has been all but closed since hostilities began. Trump has been pressuring allies to help the US secure the strait militarily but indicated Friday that he will leave that effort to other nations.

“The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not!” Trump said. “If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them.”

Trump’s comments capped a tumultuous Friday in financial markets following a Bloomberg News report that an increasingly dug-in Iranian regime was refusing to negotiate over Hormuz and with reports the US is preparing options to deploy ground troops.

Earlier: Iran Unwilling to Talk About Hormuz as Regime Digs In

Oil prices surged again Friday with global benchmark Brent closing above $112 a barrel, the highest since mid-2022. Prices eased to trade near $108 a barrel in thin post-settlement trading on Trump’s comments about possibly winding down the conflict.

Global stocks extended their losses, with the US equity benchmark falling steeply to end the weekly nearly 2% lower. Treasury yields climbed, as traders priced in a 50% chance of a Federal Reserve hike by October. Meanwhile gold saw its worst week in four decades.

Trump, a little over an hour before his social media post, had rejected the idea of declaring a halt to hostilities and expressed confidence Hormuz would reopen “itself” despite allies’ reluctance to offer assistance. 

“I don’t want to do a ceasefire. You know, you don’t do a ceasefire when you’re literally obliterating the other side,” the president had said at the White House. “We’re not looking to do that.”

Trump had expressed growing frustration in recent days after his calls for allies to help vessels transit the waterway were rebuffed, lashing out at US partners, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as China.

“NATO could help us, but they so far haven’t had the courage to do so. And others could help us, but we don’t use it,” the president said of the strait. “At a certain point, it’ll open itself.”

Read more: Trump Fans Iran Quagmire Fears With Debate on Seizing Kharg

Adding to the market turmoil was the administration’s consideration of a ground operation. Trump was evasive when asked by reporters about his plans for Kharg Island, Iran’s major oil export hub. US officials have said the White House is ordering hundreds of Marines to be deployed to the Middle East as it weighs a plan to seize the outpost.

“I may have a plan or I may not, but how would I ever say that to a reporter?” Trump said.

Any move to use ground troops to seize control of Iran’s energy facilities would pose risks for Trump, including by putting American forces at greater danger than they’ve already been exposed to in the conflict and adding to the cost and scope of the campaign. 

The Pentagon has asked for an additional $200 billion from Congress to pay for the war, sending another mixed signal on how long the administration expects the conflict to last. The regime in Tehran isn’t close to falling and Iranian officials are coalescing around the remaining leaders, according to western intelligence assessments and people familiar with the matter.

Higher gas prices are another challenge for Trump and his Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections. Retail gasoline and diesel prices in the US have jumped to the highest levels since 2022, with California’s energy regulator already warning against price gouging as some gas stations are charging as much as $8 a gallon.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Kalshi, the largest prediction market in the U.S., now boasts a $22 billion valuation, as it jumps ahead of its main competitor Polymarket. The investment firm Coatue Management is leading a $1 billion investment round at the new valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. A spokesperson for Kalshi declined to comment on the raise. 

Kalshi’s valuation comes as the company trades punches with Polymarket in a heavyweight duel for the top spot in the prediction market industry. Earlier in March, both companies were reportedly eyeing valuations of $20 billion each. On Thursday, Polymarket made news by announcing an exclusive partnership with the MLB just in time for the new baseball season.

The intense rivalry has also resulted in novel promotions such as Kalshi announcing in February that it would be providing free groceries to New Yorkers, leading Polymarket, a week later, to open a pop-up grocery store of its own. 

Kalshi is the U.S.’s biggest prediction market in large part thanks to a 2020 Commodity Futures Trading Commission decision to give it approval. The company reached a new level of popularity in January of 2025, when it introduced wagers on sports. 

Polymarket, on the other hand, had been banned from operating in the U.S. in 2022 after the CFTC found it was offering event contracts without the agency’s approval. Two years later, the FBI raided CEO Shayne Coplan’s New York City apartment. In 2025, the CFTC gave Polymarket approval and the company announced that it would be making a comeback in the U.S.

The rise of prediction markets has not occurred without its share of controversies. On Tuesday, Arizona filed criminal charges against Kalshi for operating an illegal gambling operation in the state, and the company is facing more than 20 lawsuits about its legal status. There have also been concerns about insider trading on both platforms, most notably when a trader on Polymarket made more than $400,000 on Nicolás Maduro’s ouster.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Iran is asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz even as the U.S. and Israel continue to bombard the country, first by bringing traffic to a near standstill with attacks on ships and then by choosing who can travel through the narrow waterway.

According to the maritime news and intelligence journal Lloyd’s List, Tehran has carved out a de facto “safe” shipping corridor through Iranian territorial waters via Iran’s Larak Island, where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the port authority can make visual confirmation of “approved” vessels.

Passage through the corridor is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, and the governments of India, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia and China have discussed transit plans directly with Tehran, Lloyd’s reported on Wednesday. One tanker even paid about $2 million as part of its agreement with Iran.

“Ships hoping to use the pre-approved route are expected to have communicated extensive details regarding both the ownership of the vessel and destination of the cargo to the IRGC in advance of the transit,” Lloyd’s added. “Those details are being communicated via a series of Iran-affiliated individuals operating outside of Iran.”

Despite U.S. and Israeli forces decimating Iran’s military, including its navy, the Islamic republic retains enough combat power to scare away commercial shipping from the Strait of Hormuz, keeping 20% of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas bottled up.

That’s created supply nightmares across the global economy. But at the same time, Iran’s control over the strait means it is able to deliver oil to top customer China and continue generating vital revenues.

Now, the alternate corridor through the strait represents a nascent ship registration system, and the IRGC is expected to establish a more formalized approval process, Lloyd’s said.

At least nine ships have exited the strait by way of Iran’s alternate route, including India-flagged gas tankers Shivalik and Nanda Devi.

That’s still just a trickle compared to normal prewar traffic, which topped 100 oil and cargo ships everyday. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is sending thousands of Marines to the Middle East amid reports he is considering deploying ground troops to reopen the strait.

Sources told Axios on Friday that Trump is mulling an operation to occupy or blockade Iran’s Kharg Island, which processes 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports.

With control of the island and leverage over Iran’s economy, the U.S. could pressure Tehran to relinquish its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, according to the report, easing the energy crunch that’s sent oil and gas prices soaring.

But the Marines may not arrive for a few more weeks, and Navy officials have said the Strait of Hormuz is a “kill box” filled with Iranian threats that make it too dangerous for warships to enter. Neutralizing the risks may require landing troops on Iran’s coast near the strait.

U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf have reportedly warned that if Trump ends the Iran war without restoring free navigation in the strait, then Tehran will continue to have the power to hold the regional and global economy hostage.

So although the White House signaled that Trump has no plans to send ground troops into Iran, the outcome of his war may depend on it.

“He wants Hormuz open. If he has to take Kharg Island to make it happen, that’s going to happen. If he decides to have a coastal invasion, that’s going to happen. But that decision hasn’t been made,” a senior administration official told Axios.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com