US Airstrikes Shatter Hormuz Bridges and Chabahar Tower on Sixth Night of Iran Campaign

Great-power coercion over maritime chokepoints echoes the 1984-88 “Tanker War,” when U.S. re-flagging convoys clashed with Iran to keep Hormuz open, and even the 1956 Suez Crisis when Britain and France struck Egyptian infrastructure to reverse Nasser’s canal nationalisation—both episodes proved military blows can rearrange shipping patterns but rarely secure lasting political concessions. Today’s strikes fit a longer trend of targeting dual-use infrastructure (bridges, ports, power plants) to undermine an adversary’s bargaining leverage while avoiding full-scale invasion, a playbook refined from Kosovo 1999 to the 2020 Azerbaijan-Armenia drone wars. Over a hundred-year horizon, whether this moment matters hinges on systemic energy shifts: if global trade still relies on concentrated Gulf oil in 2126, control of Hormuz will remain strategic, but if decarbonisation and diversified supply chains advance, 2026 may be remembered as the last gasp of oil-era gunboat diplomacy rather than the start of a wider Middle-East conflagration.