There exist places that appear to thwart the ambition of countries. Places where power, however immense, encounters limits it did not design. The Strait of Hormuz is such a place. It is called a choke point, and the term is accurate; yet the terminology does not adequately convey what this area represents. While oil tankers and military strategic planning pass through these waterways, so do the remnants of the everyday lives of people far from the Persian Gulf. For example, bread prices in Cairo, electricity charges in Manchester, and fertiliser deliveries to Bangladesh.
That is why this moment feels larger than a localised conflict. It is not merely whether Iran will eventually acquiesce under economic duress or if a coercive foreign policy without diplomatic imagination remains viable as a strategy.
Wars are typically defined in modest terms – limited operation, necessary measure, calibrated force. But the words we use to describe them can quickly lose relevance when the war expands beyond its initial scope. The language initially chosen to define a limited war will eventually be overshadowed by the physical realities, which make clear that a war cannot be contained by those words. Maps tend to reflect the truth behind an argument much faster than policymakers. The flow of shipping goods has slowed down. Insurance companies begin charging higher premiums for coverage. Investors react to rumours of potential conflict even sooner than governments react to the implications of that conflict. Eventually, what had been presented as reasonable pressure ultimately reveals another reality.
While Iran’s leverage was never limited to centrifuges or missiles, it has always existed within geography. Simply put, because of where it is located. One can find a degree of humility in that realisation. Powerful nations have long assumed that their superior military resources equate with greater control. However, while power and control are related, they are not one and the same. A nation may possess the capability to monitor and patrol all of its sea lanes. This, however, does not imply that such a nation possesses control over what happens once the act of commerce itself has become vulnerable.
Another old idea comes into play here. Carl von Clausewitz, the great military theorist, once warned that war has meaning only when directed by political purpose. When means begin to consume ends, war stops serving politics and starts feeding itself. It becomes harder to end because it has become a habit. That thought feels disturbingly familiar today.
That’s why one can’t help but keep coming back to this very simple question. What is the final (political) goal in mind? Collapse of the regime. Long-term blockade. Exhaustion through nuclear warfare. All these options are mentioned but rarely explained. It is easier to multiply threats rather than to think about an ending.
And maybe this is how some “forever” wars start – not with a large-scale invasion or escalation, but through the subtle replacement of movement with strategy. We’ve seen this play out before. Afghanistan. Iraq. Lebanon. Gaza. Tactical success, followed by no progress toward peace; military advantages postpone the next round of conflict instead of ending it.
Thus, war begins to appear as a state of affairs, not as an incident. The Hormuz situation exemplifies this tendency because it shows something strategically significant below the surface of the military clash. One could refer to this as “game theory”, although the concept is much simpler than the name suggests. In general, two adversaries can mutually benefit from self-restraint, but both fear they will be perceived as weak if either is the first to exhibit such behaviour. Therefore, each adversary becomes more hardened, each escalates to avoid looking like it is vulnerable; and therefore, both are made more insecure.
This isn’t difficult to understand. This is a structure based on mutual distrust.
At times, the current situation may resemble an even less stable state than brinkmanship that Thomas Schelling wrote about (a crisis scenario), at which point danger itself becomes part of bargaining. The focus of concern is therefore both intentional aggressive action and miscalculation. An error occurred when a radar signal was misunderstood. A bluff was taken as a committed act. A single event will pull actors into unintended consequences.
Historically, crises have developed in this manner.
Schelling understood that risk itself can be manipulated. In its own manner, Iran has often employed the same kind of logic. Total collapse is not required; however, sufficient levels of instability are needed to command attention. Sufficient ambiguity must exist to affect the negotiation process. It is possible to recognise the strategic rationale behind one’s adversary’s actions without admiring them.
However, all deterrence ultimately relies on something that can easily be broken. The element of predictability. Both rivals require a common basis of understanding what each will do when limits are crossed. This is an intelligible limit based upon some predictable consequence. Once these elements fail, then rational action (or at least risk management) replaces luck and gamesmanship; thus, crises become the rule rather than the exception for those within their grip. There is irony here. An effort to demonstrate the weaknesses of Iran may have instead served to remind all of Iran’s ability to exert influence. As one might expect, geography continues to govern empires.
You can target facilities, shut down banks, and patrol shadowy shipping routes. However, a strait does not function in the same manner as an empire conquers a city. You manage it. Often, you negotiate how best to navigate around it. It is a distinction. Power has learned this lesson repeatedly and continues to forget.
The Suez Crisis serves as a warning for the above reasons. Because while history certainly does repeat itself, it does so mechanistically. Therefore, overextension has many familiar patterns. While the imperial project may eventually succumb to dramatic loss or collapse, it typically falters through cumulative stress. Allies are hesitant. Home country politics intervene. Costs accumulate. What appears to be control appears to be nothing more than a burden.
Empires frequently confuse coercion with order.
There may exist yet another opportunity embedded in these types of crises. The limitations imposed by choke points may foster greater levels of creative thinking toward security issues than confrontations. Neighbouring countries are permanent and cannot be “wished” away. Several Gulf state governments appear to understand this reality if not explicitly stated. Security may not solely consist of being able to counterbalance Iran’s influence, but rather developing new forms of hard cold cooperation with it.
Not trust nor reconciliation, but a far more basic concept: mutually-managed vulnerabilities.
Repeated rivalry can, over time, produce accommodations moral agreement never reaches. What institutional theorists observed in other settings may have relevance here too. One hears talk, still tentative, of maritime understandings, regional guarantees, even mediation frameworks once dismissed too easily. What Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver called a regional security complex may, perhaps, be forming not through grand design but through the pressures of crisis itself.
If so, then the question shifts. Not who controls the Strait, but under what understandings it remains open. That is a different conversation, perhaps a wiser one. And maybe, quietly, it has already begun.
What troubles me most, though, is not only the possibility of wider war. It is what long conflict does to political thought. How easily diplomacy comes to be mistaken for weakness, restraint for naivety, and escalation for realism. How alternatives are not defeated so much as neglected until they become difficult even to imagine.
That may be war’s most serious damage: not only what it destroys materially, but what it narrows intellectually.
Thucydides, the father of the school of political realism, understood something of this. So did Clausewitz. Power untethered from judgment can become captive to its own confidence. Athens destroyed Melos during the Peloponnesian War, yet Athens still lost.
That warning still stands.
A superpower may blockade a coastline. It cannot blockade history.
History gathers in narrow places. At straits. At borders. At those points where assumptions of mastery encountered resistance, they did not expect. And perhaps that is why Hormuz matters beyond this crisis.
The tankers still move. Warships still escort them. Markets still flinch at every announcement. Yet somewhere in those waters between Iran and Oman, another question lingers beneath the immediate confrontation: not who commands the Strait, but whether those driving this crisis can recover politics before war begins driving them.
