The Strait of Hormuz Incident, or: How to Threaten a Power Plant Without Ever Actually Knowing Where the Light Switches Are

The emergency meeting of the Very Important People had been going on for seventeen minutes when someone finally asked if any of them had ever actually seen the Strait of Hormuz in person. The silence that followed was the sort that makes even the most expensive carpets seem suddenly very interesting.

Ah, deadlines. The great diplomatic tradition of giving someone a countdown before you blow something up, as if the world were a particularly tense game of Countdown where the prizes are oil and mutually assured destruction. President Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum to Iran - delivered, one assumes, with the same gravitas as a man ordering a steak well-done - has all the hallmarks of a man who has never had to explain to his insurance company why his house just got hit by a retaliatory missile strike.*

• This is not to suggest that the insurance industry has a policy for “acts of geopolitical tantrum,” but if they did, the fine print would almost certainly include a clause about “reasonable force” and whether that includes power plants.

The Strait of Hormuz, for those who have never had the pleasure of navigating it while being glared at by several very tense naval officers, is one of those places where the world’s economy gets funneled through a geographical straw. Close it, and suddenly everyone remembers why they used to keep candles in the house. The current kerfuffle hinges on whether it’s actually closed or whether someone just heard a loud noise and panicked, which is, admittedly, how most international crises start.**

** See also: the entire 20th century.

Now, threatening to bomb power plants if someone doesn’t reopen a shipping lane is the kind of negotiating tactic that works brilliantly in a boardroom and somewhat less brilliantly when the other party has access to things like “anti-aircraft missiles” and “a deeply ingrained cultural memory of Western interference.” It’s the equivalent of threatening to set your neighbour’s shed on fire if they don’t unblock your driveway - technically possible, but unlikely to end with everyone sharing a beer afterward.***

*** Historical footnote: The last time this strategy was employed with any success, it involved significantly fewer missiles and significantly more beer. See: the Congress of Vienna, 1815.

The real comedy here - the kind that makes you laugh until you realise you’re actually screaming - is in the stakes. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just a handy shortcut for oil tankers; it’s the thread holding up the entire precarious scaffolding of global energy security. Disrupt it, and suddenly every nation that relies on oil starts eyeing their stockpiles like a miser counting pennies. The threat of disruption is enough to send markets into a spiral, which means the real power lies not with the person who can close the strait, but with the person who can make everyone think they’ve closed it.****

**** This is also how magic tricks work, incidentally. The real trick isn’t the disappearing rabbit - it’s making you believe the rabbit was ever there in the first place.

Meanwhile, the people who actually live near the Strait of Hormuz - the fishermen, the port workers, the unlucky souls who just wanted a quiet Saturday - are about as consulted on this ultimatum as the average office printer is consulted before someone decides to print out the entire internet. They are the night-soil men of geopolitics: essential, unnoticed, and profoundly uninterested in whether their home is currently a bargaining chip or a strategic asset.

And that’s the thing about deadlines in international relations. They’re always issued by people who’ve never had to live with the consequences. The clock ticks down, the ultimatum expires, and somewhere, a very tired diplomat sighs and starts drafting the press release that will explain why everything is now on fire.

The footnote, of course, is where the truth lives. The main text is too busy being important to notice.