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The Opening of Trump's Box - David Dayen
President Trump’s address to the nation on—I want to say Iran?—provided no real information on when his war of choice would end, outside of the kind of assurance you get from a plumber doing work on your house that it will all wrap up in about two weeks.
But even if Trump announced the immediate cessation of hostilities and drove to the Pentagon to pull back the bombers personally, the implications of his decision to attack Iran are already determined, and eventually the investors wishcasting that everything will soon go back to normal will figure that out. This war has been an elaborate, destructive way to teach Iran a lesson, and unfortunately for the U.S., Israel, and the world, that lesson has been: Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz.
This is new information to Iran. The country had not been monetizing its geographic good fortune of having 20 percent of the world’s oil, 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas, and one-third of the world’s nitrogen-based fertilizer pass near its shoreline. Closing the strait was always an implied threat that would result from aggressive action against the nation or its leadership, something known to everyone in the world except Donald Trump, it appears. But the threat was typically closure, and what’s emerging is something quite different. Iran has slowly realized that, unbelievably, it can actually get away with throwing a tollgate across the strait. Thanks to Trump and Israel, Iran has gained immense economic and diplomatic leverage.
This means that the outcome of the war is immaterial from an economic standpoint. There will now be a permanently higher cost to shipping in one of the world’s most important choke points, as a new middleman enters the picture. This will make oil, gas, fertilizer, and a host of other products either derived from or relying on these commodities permanently more expensive. This price level increase changes the calculations of entire economies and heightens the need for an energy transition. That could be hopeful for the planet as green technologies become even more urgently necessary. But in the short term, it leads to mass suffering, resource wars, and geopolitical chaos. Pandora and her box had nothing on Trump.
But even if Trump announced the immediate cessation of hostilities and drove to the Pentagon to pull back the bombers personally, the implications of his decision to attack Iran are already determined, and eventually the investors wishcasting that everything will soon go back to normal will figure that out. This war has been an elaborate, destructive way to teach Iran a lesson, and unfortunately for the U.S., Israel, and the world, that lesson has been: Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz.
This is new information to Iran. The country had not been monetizing its geographic good fortune of having 20 percent of the world’s oil, 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas, and one-third of the world’s nitrogen-based fertilizer pass near its shoreline. Closing the strait was always an implied threat that would result from aggressive action against the nation or its leadership, something known to everyone in the world except Donald Trump, it appears. But the threat was typically closure, and what’s emerging is something quite different. Iran has slowly realized that, unbelievably, it can actually get away with throwing a tollgate across the strait. Thanks to Trump and Israel, Iran has gained immense economic and diplomatic leverage.
This means that the outcome of the war is immaterial from an economic standpoint. There will now be a permanently higher cost to shipping in one of the world’s most important choke points, as a new middleman enters the picture. This will make oil, gas, fertilizer, and a host of other products either derived from or relying on these commodities permanently more expensive. This price level increase changes the calculations of entire economies and heightens the need for an energy transition. That could be hopeful for the planet as green technologies become even more urgently necessary. But in the short term, it leads to mass suffering, resource wars, and geopolitical chaos. Pandora and her box had nothing on Trump.
https://prospect.org/2026/04/02/opening-of-trumps-box-iran-war-strait-hormuz/
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