Iran is winning the war by turning geography into a weapon. It has closed the Strait of Hormuz, stopping 140 tankers a day, and is now operating a tiered toll system. According to Nicholas Mulder on Breaking Points, friendly nations like China pass freely, while neutral ships must pay fees in Chinese yuan or cryptocurrencies like Tether. This move bypasses the SWIFT banking system and accelerates the decoupling of global energy from the dollar.
Major US allies are choosing pragmatism over loyalty. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has refused to join military action, and France is denying Israel airspace for US weapon transfers. Saagar Enjeti notes that allies like Japan and South Korea are facing a recursive fiscal crisis, forced to sell their own currencies to afford dollar-priced oil. The American security guarantee has shattered.
Nicholas Mulder, Breaking Points:
- Sanctions, often first billed as an alternative to war, have now really become kind of an on-ramp to war.
- It's possible that countries accept this toll more quickly than we might expect.
President Trump’s response has been militarily ineffective and politically isolating. His promise to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age” - a line recycled from the failed Vietnam strategy - was met with a 10% spike in oil prices and falling stock futures. Suzanne Maloney on The Ezra Klein Show said the administration entered the conflict with “magical thinking” that the regime would collapse, but killing Supreme Leader Khamenei only hardened Revolutionary Guard control.
General Stanley McChrystal, on The Opinions, argued that Washington is addicted to the seduction of air power and special operations, which cannot change political reality. “The outcomes are in the minds of the people,” he said. “Unless you're going to kill all the people, you may not affect that outcome.” Iran views the conflict through the lens of decades of resentment, and infrastructure bombing deepens it.
The economic consequences are beginning to metastasize. Jet fuel in Singapore and Europe has hit $200 a barrel, and a month of global floating oil storage is depleted. Beyond energy, helium shortages will hit chip manufacturing, and fertilizer costs will spike food prices. Iran’s strategy is to outlast Trump’s political patience as the global economy stalls.
Trump has effectively abdicated the US role as global security guarantor. He told the New York Post that if the UK or China wants the oil, they can secure the waterway themselves. This, Maloney argues, is a “Suez moment.” If the US walks away without reopening the Strait, China and Pakistan will negotiate the settlement, and Iran will emerge with a permanent economic lever.
Tucker Carlson, The Tucker Carlson Show:
- The nation that forces the peace is the nation in charge.
- The country that forces order on the Persian Gulf that opens the Strait of Hormuz is the nation that runs the world by definition.
The unipolar era is over. The conflict has revealed that ultimate power is not the ability to destroy, but the ability to restore order and control physical resources. As allies defect and the tollbooth operates, the world is reorganizing around a new, fragmented reality where the dollar’s dominance is no longer enforced by the US Navy.
