The world’s most critical oil chokepoint is closed.
Iran didn’t need a physical blockade. A credible threat was enough. Shippers and insurers fled the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off roughly one-fifth of global oil exports overnight. The Trump administration, according to reports on Breaking Points and The Intelligence, ignored Pentagon warnings and expected a quick regime collapse. Now, President Trump is publicly begging NATO allies to help secure the passage, a request they are refusing within 24 hours.
The economic dominoes are falling. European natural gas prices spiked 25% after Iranian-backed strikes hit Qatar’s main LNG terminal. Analyst Nick Bhatia on What Bitcoin Ditched his previous economic outlook, stating he now must “take price as truth” as oil breaches $100 and equities break down. The war’s bill is coming due domestically, too. A $100 billion supplemental funding request is being drafted, which under budget rules would require equivalent cuts to domestic programs like healthcare and SNAP.
The justification for the war is cracking. Joe Kent, who resigned as National Counterterrorism Director, told Breaking Points and Tucker Carlson that U.S. intelligence assessed Iran was not an imminent nuclear threat. He alleges a pro-Israel echo chamber around Trump systematically shifted the goalposts from opposing a nuclear weapon to opposing any enrichment, manufacturing a casus belli. The FBI is now investigating him for allegedly leaking classified information - a move hosts Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball call retaliatory “bullshit.”
With the strait closed, military options are grim. Seizing Iran’s Kharg Island, which handles 90% of its oil exports, is on the table but would be a bloody, protracted occupation. Strikes on the island over the weekend may be prelude. Meanwhile, Iran is already targeting alternative export routes, hitting Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu refinery on the Red Sea. The only remaining U.S. escalation, according to analysis on Breaking Points, is a ground invasion - a path Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now publicly advocating.
The strategic miscalculation is complete. The U.S. can’t reopen the strait militarily, its allies won’t help, and the global energy system is facing what Saagar Enjeti termed an “earth-shattering” crisis. The path forward points to more American blood and treasure spent, funded by cuts at home, for a war that began on contested grounds.
Joe Kent, Breaking Points:
- I truly believe that the Israelis forced our hand in this.
- The only thing that was imminent about the operations in Iran was the fact that the Israelis were going to attack.








