“The only thing prohibiting transit in the straits right now is Iran shooting at shipping. It is open for transit, should Iran not do that.” This staggering remark from “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth explains why none of the US allies being asked to join in the fight to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are prepared to do so: they were not consulted; this is not a Nato operation; and, above all, the people in charge are plainly careless. Of course, Iran is attacking the shipping in the strait. That is the most obvious way for its leadership to fend off the US and Israeli assault. The question is rather what are the attackers able to do about it. After all, as Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater, notes, “in the case of this Iran war, . . . there is near-universal agreement, that it all comes down to who controls the Strait of Hormuz”. At the moment Iran does. So long as this is true, it is winning.
Quite simply, as the International Energy Agency has noted: “The war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” Yet it also estimates that global oil supply will actually rise “by 1.1mn barrels a day in 2026 on average, with non-Opec+ producers accounting for the entire increase.” That is because the IEA expects trade flows through the strait to resume gradually from the end of March and then quickly recover over April. But it is not hard to imagine a far grimmer future.