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Posted by Joshua Scheer
As the war surrounding Iran widens and global energy markets jitter, the narrow waters of the Strait of Hormuz have once again become the world’s most dangerous shipping lane — and the stage for competing narratives from Washington, Tehran, and European capitals.
Roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the strait each day. Normally, about 100 tankers and cargo vessels thread the narrow corridor between Iran and the Gulf states daily. But with regional fighting intensifying after U.S. and Israeli strikes, the question hanging over global markets is simple: who actually controls the flow of energy?
Officials in Washington insist the answer will soon be the United States.
Speaking on the television program Fox News Sunday, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright struck a confident tone, arguing that the disruption to shipping lanes would last only weeks.
“We’re massively attriting their ability to strike with missiles and drones,” Wright said, referring to Iran’s military capabilities. “Energy will flow soon.”
According to Wright, one tanker has already passed through the strait without incident — a symbolic reassurance meant to calm a nervous energy market as gasoline prices spike.
The broader goal, he suggested, goes beyond stabilizing shipping lanes. Washington’s strategy, he said, is to permanently weaken Iran’s ability to threaten global energy supplies.
“Iran will finally be defanged,” Wright argued, describing the economic disruption as “a small price to pay.”
That framing — the idea that global economic turbulence is a temporary inconvenience in pursuit of strategic dominance — reflects a familiar logic of U.S. foreign policy: short-term chaos in the name of long-term order.
But officials in Tehran see the situation very differently.
Senior Iranian political figure Ali Larijani dismissed the notion that outside military pressure could restore stability to the waterway.
“It is unlikely that any security will be achieved in the Strait of Hormuz amid the fires of the war ignited by the United States and Israel in the region, especially if that is by the design of parties that were not far removed from supporting this war and contributing to its fanning.”
He added that attempts to secure the strait would ring hollow if they were led by the same governments that helped ignite the conflict.
The comment highlights a deeper contradiction at the center of the crisis: the powers now proposing to “protect” global shipping are the same ones conducting the military operations that placed those shipping lanes in danger.
Meanwhile, European leaders are scrambling to contain the fallout.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France and its allies are preparing what he described as a “purely defensive” naval mission aimed at reopening the strait.
Macron warned that the war is already placing enormous strain on global trade routes. With tensions spreading across the Middle East, not only the Strait of Hormuz but also the Suez Canal and the Red Sea face mounting pressure.
“The prices of oil, gas and international trade are deeply affected by this war,” Macron said.
If those arteries close simultaneously, the result would not simply be higher gasoline prices — it would be a shock to the entire global economy.
For now, Washington insists the situation is under control. One tanker through the strait, officials say, is proof that the strategy is working.
But energy markets have learned a brutal lesson over the past two decades: stability in the Gulf is rarely restored as quickly as policymakers promise.
And when the world’s most important shipping corridor sits in the middle of an expanding regional war, assurances that the disruption will last “weeks, not months” may sound less like analysis and more like hope.
Because history suggests something else entirely: once great powers begin fighting over the world’s energy lifelines, the consequences rarely remain contained to a narrow strip of water.
Now, as the official story has switched — for what seems like the 10th time — to being about protecting global trade and stabilizing energy markets, some of its loudest advocates are saying the quiet part out loud. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham recently celebrated what he called the financial upside of the conflict, telling viewers on Fox News that once the government of Iran falls, “we’re gonna make a ton of money” and no one will threaten the Strait of Hormuz again. The remark, delivered as bombs continue to fall and global markets convulse, offers a blunt reminder of what critics have long argued: behind the language of “security” and “stability,” wars in the oil-rich Middle East have often produced enormous windfalls for arms manufacturers, energy giants, and the political class that champions them — even as the human and economic costs ripple across the world.
We’ve heard these lies before. They failed then, and they will fail now, because people have a right to sovereignty. It’s not so easy to impose your sick empire on the world, even if you can bomb people into submission. Someone said that Graham was unhinged, and they were right — but sadly the world itself now feels unhinged, and the U.S. government bears much of the responsibility for that reality.
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