Nuke Oman for a Canal: What Could Go Wrong?
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich proposes using thermonuclear explosions to carve a canal across Oman and bypass the Strait of Hormuz. History and physics suggest the idea is neither practical nor safe.
The Strait of Hormuz is a strategic chokepoint that the Iranians are using as leverage in their asymmetric fight against the United States and Israel. By blocking the waterway and preventing the flow of Persian Gulf gas and oil to the world, it’s causing economic instability and generating international pressure on Washington to end the fight.
The solution, according to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, is to nuke Oman.
And not just nuke the other country on the Strait. Continuously nuke it until there’s a new canal cutting across the desert, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz and reopening the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea.
“Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks,” Gingrich wrote on X.
Simple idea, right?
It’s more like a simpleton’s idea.
The concept is born of experiments by the U.S. and Soviet Union during the 1960s under nuclear engineering programs in which these weapons of mass destruction would be put to use expediting large and difficult civil engineering projects.
Consider this: It took 10 years of continuous digging and manual labor to build the Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. It took 33 years and cost thousands of lives to cut the Panama Canal through the Central American jungles and mountains. Through conventional engineering, it would take 25 to 40 years to construct the estimated 62-mile-long canal through Oman, thereby avoiding the direct Iranian threat.
Gingrich doesn’t expressly say it, but the implication is that controlled nuclear explosions would get the job done almost instantaneously. That’s hardly the case.
Realistically, it would take three to five years to survey and map the canal, identify where to place the nuclear devices, prepare the route, and drill explosion wells. Add another one to two years for the actual detonations, blasting out millions of tons of sand and rock, and creating a trench 400 meters wide and 60 meters deep. Then it would take another five to ten years to complete the canal, including dredging, smoothing, lock construction, and the necessary “cool-down” period.
So, not an instant solution to the current crisis.
But even if feasible, it’s not practical. The experiments conducted nearly 70 years ago by the Americans and Soviets found that the fallout and radiation released into the atmosphere by even a few nuclear devices negated the time benefits. Moreover, the immediate zone – the canal being built – would remain so radioactive that it would make the passageway too dangerous to transit for decades.
Gingrich, a historian by training, is blowing smoke out of his ass. He knows this isn’t a practical solution. He’s chumming the waters of the MAGA base, throwing out radical ideas as simple solutions based on American firepower. Classic sound and fury signifying nothing.
A more practical solution is to expand pipelines across the Arabian desert from Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait to terminals on the Red Sea. Some already exist, but they don’t have the capacity to make up for the oil trapped by the Strait’s closing. And pipelines are static, making them vulnerable to drone and missile attacks. Even still, building new pipelines across hostile terrain is a long and expensive proposition. Again, no immediate solution.
At this point, there are three practical solutions.
Deploy more naval and land-based defense assets to counter any mines, missiles, and drones deployed by the Iranians. Not a foolproof solution, but one that, with enough ships and missile interceptors, could partially restart traffic.
A land invasion of Iran, in which the U.S. and allies (if any will join) occupy the crescent region around the Strait, securing the waterway for commercial traffic. Such an invasion would take months of planning, require at least 100,000 troops, and would be exceedingly costly in lives, equipment, and treasure.
End the war, period. (Terms favorable to either side notwithstanding.)
That’s it.
The U.S. and Israel started this war thinking that a swift air campaign would provide enough cover for the Iranian people to rise up and change their government. Instead, they got an unrelenting authoritarian government that has no incentive to step down. Iran knows it can continue to inflict economic pain on the rest of the world indefinitely until a larger force comes in and tries to occupy the country.
If the U.S. puts boots on the ground, we’ll have a war like Ukraine – an unending struggle fueled by proxy suppliers in which attrition is the only result. That’s the very definition of a “forever war” that Trump so vehemently opposed for decades.
So no nukes are going to save the situation quickly or even in the long term. The Iran war is a slog and will continue until the U.S. runs out of bullets or Iran runs out of resolve.
Special thanks to reader Chip Rodgers (@insidepartnering) for the suggestion.