On July 13, 2026, President Donald Trump announced a blockade against Iran, to begin the next day. Iranian officials remained defiant, demanding its end but also denying its impact. U.S. Central Command subsequently reported dozens of ships diverted, and a few boarded or disabled.
U.S. bombing of Iran’s Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea ports further undermines Iran’s ability to replenish itself by sea, although Russia and Iran use the Caspian Sea as a backdoor.
While the White House and the Pentagon now play a longer game to deny the Islamic Republic resources it needs to pay its machinery of repression, they may wrongly conceive Iran’s mechanism of running the blockade. Just because the United States focuses on sea, does not mean U.S. adversaries do.
While the White House and the Pentagon now play a longer game to deny the Islamic Republic resources it needs to pay its machinery of repression, they may wrongly conceive Iran’s mechanism of running the blockade.
Iran maintains more than 50 official border crossings. Some handle passengers, while others handle only goods. Anecdotally, these have become much more active since the maritime embargo. While smugglers operate several informal crossings, these have limited capacity to transit the heaviest goods and weaponry.
The geography of Iran—with most of the population and military centers in the north and northwest—limits the utility of the five Afghanistan and six Pakistan border crossings. Afghanistan is too topographically challenging to serve as an extended lifeline. China might use its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor connections to ship weaponry to the port of Gwadar, but restive Baluch in both Pakistan and Iran, as well as the limited road corridors inside Iran, make Pakistan an unreliable lifeline for the regime.
Iraq has 11 formal crossings split between Iraqi government and Kurdistan Regional Government control. These are less important for supplying Iran than for supplying Iraq: The Talabani brothers receive discounted contraband Iranian oil to sell inside Iraq. The Kurdistan Democratic Party trades with Iran through the Haji Umran crossing, high in the Zagros mountains. Iranian operatives, Iranians dumping cheap manufacturing and agricultural goods, and religious pilgrims use border crossings further south.
For sanctions-busting and military resupply, Iran’s northern border crossings—Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Armenia—are more important. There are four official border crossings between Turkey and Iran, including road and rail links. While Turkey is a NATO member, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeatedly has sought to profit from sanctions-busting and trade with both Russia and Iran, putting the Turkey-Iran border posts in potential play.
There are ten border crossings between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Astara is the post through which Iranians and Azerbaijani small traders operate, bringing suitcases of goods to sell in each other’s countries. Recent Iranian refurbishment, however, makes it far more conducive to land-based trade. The same holds true for Bileh Savar, near Ardabil, and the 24-hour per day crossing at Jolfa on the border with the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan. Turkmenistan, meanwhile, has reopened the Lotfabad–Artyk crossing, which also runs 24 hours per day. Trains can cross at Sarakhs, albeit with a change of gauge. The Incheh Borun-Gudri Olum crossing is especially important because it is on the Asian Highway 70 road and rail corridor, which runs nearly 3,000 miles from the Russia-occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk to Bandar Abbas.
The Armenia-Iran crossing, six miles from Meghri, Armenia, mostly handles travelers. The Armenian side is mountainous, with roads ill-purposed for frequent truck traffic. While Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio promote the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity to connect Turkey and Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan proper, across Armenia’s southern Syunik province, they ignore the fact that Azerbaijan also operates its own Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan Araz corridor through northern Iran.
With so much Iranian connectivity to Russia and perhaps China through Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and, potentially, Turkey, the U.S. policy question becomes how to block the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ land bridge.
While Trump briefly spoke about Iranian Kurds in the context of a discarded plan to utilize Iranian Kurdish peshmerga to create an insurgency and march on Tehran, the Iranian Kurds now have a potentially much larger role to play. A Kurdish insurgency still makes sense, even more so if the Kurds extend their umbrella to Iranian fighters from movements. The goal should be not the terrorism in which the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization engages, but rather, a disciplined insurgency involving ground forces and perhaps drones to disrupt, if not block, traffic crossing from the Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Turkmen borders.
The United States cannot win against Iran if the White House and State Department continue to discount partnerships with indigenous forces like the Iranian Kurds.
The Kurds are especially well-prepared to undertake such a mission if they receive political and diplomatic support, not only in northwestern Iran but also in the northeast. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, Shah Abbas I relocated Kurds to Khorasan. Their descendants today are well-positioned to block traffic crossing from Turkmenistan.
Trump repeatedly promises that victory is at hand, but the United States cannot win against Iran if the White House and State Department continue to discount partnerships with indigenous forces like the Iranian Kurds. Partnering with the Kurds is not about ethnic separatism inside Iran; rather, they are a force—and perhaps the only force—that can prevent Russia from trucking in weaponry as fast as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can fire it.
The Kurds are not stupid, however. Syrian Kurds enabled the Islamic State’s defeat but Washington never honored the vague promises it offered. Today, Iranian Kurds say they can help the United States win, but they will not do so on promises alone. Instead, the State Department and Department of the Treasury will have to delist and de-designate Kurdish groups falsely accused of terror, drug trafficking, or financial impropriety, and allow the same groups to operate openly in Washington, DC, where they can liaise and coordinate to rescue the world economy and help bring freedom to all Iranians.
