The Bridgeton and the tanker escorts are John Kiriakou’s historical answer to a wartime question about whether the United States would need to escort commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in 2026.
The precedent
Kiriakou’s answer is that it has been done before, under an administration that was not shy about it. “Well, that’s what Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s when the Iranians threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz. He sent the US Navy there to escort each and every oil tanker through the Strait.”[1]
What he saw
He attaches a first-hand memory. “I remember I remember being on a on a boat in the Persian Gulf and seeing the the SS Bridgeton.”[1][2]
The ship’s significance was its size and its fate. “The Bridgeton was famous in the ’80s because the Iranians attacked it and set it ablaze. It It was the biggest oil tanker in the world at the time. It ended up being towed into port and repaired. It took a couple of years to repair it.”[2]
The 2026 application
Kiriakou expects the pattern to recur, and describes the commitment in open-ended terms: “we may be headed into the same scenario where there’s going to have to be a long-term heavy US naval presence in the Gulf just to escort uh ships through the Strait of Hormuz.”[2]
His warning is that the remedy is also the hazard. Such a presence “of course could set us up for being targeted” — and, as he puts it, “it sets up it’s a trigger for escalation.”[2][3]
Whether the Strait can be closed
On the underlying question, Kiriakou endorses Bob Baer’s long-standing argument, which a viewer had recalled: that Iran retains the ability to shut the Strait. “And uh and he was correct then when he wrote that book 25 years ago. He’s correct today. Um the Iranians can shut the Strait of Hormuz.”[4][5]
He goes further and says he would do it. “If I were the Iranian leader, I would shut the Strait of Hormuz.” The reasoning is the same asymmetry he applies throughout the war: Iran will not win a sustained bombing campaign, “but over the long term, you know, they live there. It’s their neighborhood, and they can inflict real economic harm on the West.”[5]