Trump Greenlights Indefinite Blockade of Iranian Ports

Maritime strangulation has long been a tool of great-power coercion—from the British blockade of Germany in 1914-19 to the U.S. “quarantine” of Cuba in October 1962 and the 1984-88 Tanker War in the Gulf. Trump’s turn to an economic siege rather than renewed bombing fits a century-old pattern of using sea power to force political concessions while avoiding the domestic backlash of body bags. Yet blockades often harden resistance: Japan’s response to the 1941 U.S. oil embargo was Pearl Harbor, not capitulation. Structurally, the episode underscores two intertwined trends: (1) the weaponization of the dollar-denominated energy system, and (2) the shrinking policy space of oil-importing economies as supply shocks now feed directly into inflation targeting regimes. Whether this moment matters in 2126 depends on how quickly the world diversifies away from fossil choke points; if the energy transition accelerates, today’s Hormuz standoff may be remembered less as a geopolitical triumph than as the last gasp of oil-era gunboat diplomacy.