Seizing the Strait of Hormuz... Iran's Economic Nuclear Option

In terms of description, the raging and ongoing confrontation between Iran, America, and Israel currently is not a limited confrontation or a fleeting test of strength. Rather, it is an existential conflict in which each party seeks to reshape the regional landscape according to its vision and long-term interests.\n\nNor is this confrontation a war of attrition or merely a tactical point-scoring operation. Instead, it is a bone-breaking round with all the military and strategic connotations the word carries, where major objectives intersect with the field calculations that each party seeks to achieve.\n\nHence, for Iran to thwart the direct and indirect objectives of aggression against it, it adopted two strategies: a policy of blinding and overwhelming air defense systems, thereby enabling the depletion of precision munitions and air interception missiles, and reaching a critical stage where America and its partner cannot continue the war, and must seek a settlement to bring them down from their high horse. Therefore, it launched attacks targeting American bases, missile platforms, radar systems, and security and intelligence centers spread across Arab countries in the Gulf, Jordan, and Iraq. It also carried out intense launches of missiles and kamikaze drones at the beginning of the aggression, using older, imprecise missiles to achieve this goal, paving the way for the use of precise missiles with heavy warheads, such as the Fattah, Emad, Qadr, Khorramshahr, and Kheibar Shekan models.\n\nConversely, it resorted to what is known as the economic nuclear option, which is not just a tool for political pressure, but a criterion for victory and defeat, by controlling the global energy lifeline, by seizing the Strait of Hormuz and ensuring maritime navigation within it, according to the Iranian vision that states: either security for all or security for none.\n\nAmerica sought to neutralize the Strait from the war to ensure the stability of the global economy, and Iran sought not to turn it into a tool of political pressure, but rather transformed it into a strategic leverage beyond the military field.\n\nThe American confusion, disarray, and lies, especially from the President who lies as he breathes and issues contradictory statements, became clear through the American assertion that maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz is safe and unobstructed, that America destroyed the Iranian navy, and that it succeeded in neutralizing the Strait from the war and preventing Tehran from using it as an economic weapon.\n\nThe facts on the ground, however, said otherwise. Iranian responses to the American rhetoric were not delayed, especially from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which stated that the security of navigation in the Gulf is linked to Iran's security, and that any attempt to impose military control over the Strait would turn the entire region into a confrontation arena. This rhetoric was not merely a political stance, but a declaration of a military doctrine based on transforming the Strait into a strategic leverage if the war expanded.\n\nThe positive reaction of oil markets to American statements about safe navigation in the Strait, and that America would ensure navigation there by force if necessary, through warships escorting oil tankers—Trump's "heresies" and lies, which pushed oil prices back down—quickly dissipated. Iran stated that it controls the Strait of Hormuz and only prevents navigation for American and Israeli tankers, and that countries that expel American and Israeli ambassadors would have their oil tankers allowed to cross the Strait.\n\nWhen an Israeli and another American oil tanker did not comply with the Iranian decision, they were targeted by Iranian boats, disproving the American narrative that navigation in the Strait is safe, and America could not impose its control over the Strait by military force, nor did American warships escort oil tankers to ensure their passage.\n\nThe Iranian targeting of those two tankers, besides carrying Iranian political and military messages, stated that the passage through which approximately five percent of global oil trade passes daily does not need to be completely closed to become a factor of economic disruption; it is enough for passage to become risky for insurance and transport prices to rise and for shipping and navigation traffic to decline, to cause an earthquake in energy markets.\n\nAmerica failed to establish its equation that the war must remain confined to military aspects and not extend to the global energy lifeline. Iran stated that the Strait is part of the war and a strategic leverage, and it holds this card firmly. Incidentally, America's partner in the war, Israel, did not commit to preventing the war from extending to the global energy lifeline, as it deliberately bombed Iranian oil refineries and storage facilities, which prompted an Iranian response by bombing the port and oil refinery of Haifa, which produces 40% of Israel's energy. This forced Washington to ask its ally not to target Iranian oil refineries and storage facilities, because that would lead to adverse repercussions on oil prices in terms of their increase.\n\nIt is clear that the current scene indicates that the war has entered a different phase, where the global economy itself is becoming part of the confrontation arena. If pressure on navigation in Hormuz continues, the conflict may gradually shift from a direct military confrontation to an indirect global economic war, fueled by energy and its markets.\n\nThe Strait of Hormuz is no longer just a geographical detail in this war; it has become the key to interpreting its outcomes. If the United States can restore full stability to navigation there, it will have succeeded in neutralizing Iran's most important leverage and can prepare to declare its victory. However, if the Strait remains an area of continuous threat, it means that Iran has succeeded in bringing the stranglehold of the global economy into the heart of the battle, a development that could redraw the balances of the war in the coming weeks, making the opening of the Strait a primary global issue, which will not happen without an agreement with Iran, whose bill must be paid in exchange for recognizing its demands regarding its nuclear file and missile program, and these are the announced conditions for compliance.