Trump Issues 'Shoot-to-Kill' Order in Hormuz as US Boards Iranian Tanker

Great-power brinkmanship around oil chokepoints echoes the 1987-88 ‘Tanker War’ in the Iran-Iraq conflict when the US re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers and fought IRGC speedboats, and also recalls Britain’s 1956 Suez adventure—both instances where maritime leverage, not battlefield victories, shaped political outcomes. Today’s duel of boardings and mine threats fits a long trajectory: energy arteries like Hormuz, Malacca and Bab el-Mandeb have become arenas for economic warfare in an interdependent world, where controlling flows can punish an adversary without formal occupation. Whether Trump’s escalation succeeds or not, it spotlights a century-scale trend toward weaponizing supply chains; in 2126 historians may see this week less as a decisive battle and more as another turn in the slow shift from kinetic wars to chokepoint coercion, with technology (drones, precision mining) giving middle powers like Iran outsized disruptive power even under conventional inferiority.