Trump Orders Preparations for Joint US-Israel Strikes on Iran’s Energy Grid

Great-power coercion through energy sabotage has a long pedigree: the 1991 Gulf War’s 16 Jan attacks that blacked out Baghdad and Iran’s own ‘Oil War’ with Iraq in the 1980s both aimed to cripple an adversary’s economy without full-scale invasion. Today’s contemplated strikes fit the same mold—weaponising infrastructure to pressure capitulation rather than chasing battlefield victories. The US-Israel alignment echoes 1956 Suez coordination but underlines a post-Cold-War trend of coalition air campaigns replacing ground occupations. Yet decades of such “shock” air offensives—from NATO’s 78-day Kosovo bombing (1999) to Russia’s grid attacks in Ukraine (2022-23)—show limited long-term political yield and heavy civilian cost. If executed, knocking out Iran’s power grid could lock the region deeper into a tit-for-tat cycle, accelerate moves by Gulf states and China to diversify energy routes away from Hormuz, and nudge the world toward an era where critical-infrastructure warfare becomes routine—an unsettling precedent that may shape conflict norms for the next century.