Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : The war with Iran is no longer merely a contest of missiles, aircraft and naval power. It has become a struggle over the arteries through which the world’s energy flows. For months, the United States, Israel and regional producers have searched for ways to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz. Israel has proposed pipelines carrying Gulf energy westward to its Mediterranean ports, while other projects envisage moving Iraqi and regional oil toward the Mediterranean. But events of recent days demonstrate a fundamental weakness in this strategy: bypassing one vulnerable chokepoint does not abolish geography. It merely transfers the vulnerability somewhere else.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his vision explicit in March. He proposed oil and gas pipelines running westward across the Arabian Peninsula to Israeli Mediterranean ports, arguing that such infrastructure could eliminate dependence on maritime chokepoints.
The broader search for alternative corridors has also involved proposals linking Iraqi energy resources with Syria’s Mediterranean coast. These projects potentially create enormous commercial opportunities for transit countries, ports, construction companies and international energy corporations. The contest, therefore, is not simply over oil. It is increasingly over who will build, operate and influence the infrastructure carrying that oil.
Saudi Arabia already possessed the most important working example of the bypass strategy. Its 1,200-kilometre East-West Pipeline, or Petroline, carries crude from the kingdom’s eastern producing regions across the Arabian Peninsula to Yanbu on the Red Sea. As Hormuz became increasingly dangerous, this pipeline became enormously important. Roughly four million barrels per day were moving through the system, allowing Saudi Arabia to export without sending those barrels through Hormuz.
Then came the drones. Saudi authorities say several drones launched from Iraqi territory attacked the East-West Pipeline system in the Riyadh and Madinah regions. The attacks caused injuries and damage and forced authorities to shut the pipeline as a precaution while technical teams assessed its safety. The entire 1,200-kilometre pipeline did not need to be physically destroyed. A sophisticated energy artery depends upon pumping stations, controls and associated infrastructure. Damage at strategically important points can interrupt the entire flow.
The economic consequences could be enormous. Saudi Arabia reportedly has enough exportable crude stored at Yanbu to maintain current flows for only about five to seven days if Petroline remains closed. After that, as much as four percent of global oil supply could be jeopardised.
Repair estimates remain uncertain, ranging from days to weeks. The important strategic lesson is therefore not whether Petroline can eventually be repaired. Of course it can. The lesson is that the principal functioning escape route from Hormuz has itself demonstrated its vulnerability.
This is where Iran’s strategic depth becomes important. Tehran does not require conventional naval supremacy over every kilometre of Hormuz to exercise extraordinary leverage there. Commercial shipping operates according to risk. One successful missile or drone attack can force shipowners, insurers and cargo operators to reconsider whether a voyage remains commercially acceptable.
The same logic increasingly applies at the other end of the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have advanced along the Red Sea coast and reached Perim Island, situated inside Bab el-Mandeb—the narrow gateway connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Saudi Arabia’s Petroline may bypass Hormuz by terminating at Yanbu, but tankers sailing from the Red Sea toward Asian markets still confront the geography surrounding Bab el-Mandeb. The alternative route therefore possesses a chokepoint of its own.
This is what I describe as Iran’s strategic checkmate of the Hormuz-bypass concept. I do not use “checkmate” to mean that Iran possesses uncontested sovereignty over two international waterways or has defeated American military power. My argument is economic and strategic. Iran and forces aligned with it possess sufficient capabilities across different theatres to make alternative energy routes vulnerable. In commercial transportation, the ability credibly to threaten passage can sometimes be almost as consequential as physically occupying it.
The deeper story concerns money and power. Every new pipeline creates winners. Construction companies receive contracts. Energy corporations acquire projects. Transit countries collect revenues. Ports gain business. Investors obtain returns. Countries hosting terminals acquire additional strategic importance. Israel’s proposed Mediterranean corridor could enhance its position as an energy bridge. American companies participating in Middle Eastern energy and infrastructure projects can obtain major commercial opportunities. Regional governments, meanwhile, seek diversified routes that reduce their dependence on waterways vulnerable to war.
Yet the cruel paradox is that Middle Eastern oil-producing countries risk carrying a disproportionate share of the immediate damage. Their pipelines become targets. Their export terminals require protection. Their production revenues become vulnerable to interruption. Their cities face missile and drone threats, while insurance and transportation costs rise. Saudi Arabia’s present predicament illustrates the danger: an infrastructure system designed to provide strategic security from Hormuz has itself become exposed to the expanding battlefield.
The widening conflict around Bab el-Mandeb demonstrates another limitation of purely military calculations. A superpower can deploy aircraft carriers, destroyers, missile defences and tens of thousands of personnel, yet commercial shipping requires something more difficult to guarantee: confidence. A shipping company contemplating a billion-dollar vessel and valuable cargo does not ask merely which navy is stronger. It asks whether the ship can complete its voyage safely, whether insurance remains available and whether the potential profit justifies the possibility of catastrophic loss.
That is why geography continues to defeat attempts to declare Hormuz irrelevant. A pipeline across Saudi Arabia substitutes pumping stations and hundreds of kilometres of exposed infrastructure for the strait. A Syrian corridor would traverse another politically sensitive landscape. An Israeli Mediterranean corridor would require enormous investment, security and regional cooperation. And Red Sea exports must still confront the security environment surrounding Bab el-Mandeb. There is no magic line on a map capable of removing geopolitical risk.
The Iran war has consequently evolved into something much larger than the conflict with which it began. It is simultaneously a military confrontation, an energy war and a contest over the future architecture of global petroleum transportation. The question is no longer simply who produces Middle Eastern oil. Increasingly, it is who builds the pipelines, controls the ports, protects the waterways and possesses leverage between the wellhead and the consumer.
The architects of alternative corridors hoped to diminish Iran’s greatest geographical advantage by diminishing Hormuz itself. Instead, the expanding conflict is demonstrating that energy routes cannot simply escape geography. Close one chokepoint and another becomes indispensable. Build a pipeline and the pumping stations become strategic assets. Shift exports toward the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb assumes greater importance.
That is the strategic irony of this war. The attempt to make Hormuz irrelevant may instead have demonstrated just how difficult it is to make Iran’s geography irrelevant. The map of the Middle East has not changed. What has changed is the number of places on that map where the world’s energy lifelines can now be threatened.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : The geopolitical landscape has witnessed few spectacles as paradoxical as the recent confrontation between the coalition of the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran. What was predicted by Western military analysts and policymakers to be a swift, decisive campaign—a “shock and awe” reminiscent of the opening salvos of the 2003 Iraq War—has instead morphed into a historical anomaly.

It is a conflict defined not by the victor’s triumph, but by the hubris of the aggressor being dashed upon the rocks of asymmetric resilience. The United States, the sole superpower possessing a military budget exceeding 1.5 Trillion annually—larger than the next 20 countries combined—has been forced into a humiliating strategic retreat.

After failing to achieve a single operational objective, the rhetoric has shifted from “military obliteration” to “economic annihilation.” This pivot from Tomahawks to Treasury sanctions is not a sign of strength; it is the death rattle of a failing hegemonic strategy, a threat as hollow as the bombs that failed to subdue Tehran.

In the lead-up to the conflict, the rhetoric emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv was characterized by a certainty that bordered on the biblical. Officials promised the “degradation of Iran’s military infrastructure to the Stone Age,” invoking imagery of an assault more severe and more comprehensive than the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After having failed to achieve even a single declared objective of waging war against Iran, the United States found itself in a position unique in its modern history: it had not lost a war tactically, but it had failed to win strategically. Iranian uranium enrichment, far from being halted, reportedly accelerated in response to the strikes, with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirming that stockpiles of 60% enriched uranium had risen by over 15% during the conflict window. The “daunting military machine” was halted not by Iranian nuclear parity, but by the cost of persistence.

This military failure has profound implications. For three decades, the United States has relied on the specter of its military supremacy to police the global order. The failure to bend Iran—a nation whose military budget is approximately $24.6 billion, a mere fraction of America’s—breaks the spell of invincibility.

It demonstrates that a nation-state can withstand the full kinetic might of the U.S. military if it possesses dispersed infrastructure, a decentralized command structure, and a popular willingness to absorb punishment.

Iran’s successful enforcement of maritime control over the Strait of Hormuz serves as a case study in asymmetric deterrence. Despite the presence of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which includes aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, Iran’s swarm tactics of fast-attack craft and shore-based anti-ship ballistic missiles effectively checked U.S. freedom of navigation. The sight of Chinese oil tankers transiting the Strait under Iranian escort, unchallenged by the U.S. blockade, was a symbolic dagger in the heart of American naval supremacy.

Having failed on the kinetic battlefield, the United States has pivoted to the economic battlefield. The new executive order announced by the President promises “excruciating economic pain never seen before in the history of humankind.” This is a bold claim.

It is, however, a rhetorical escalation of a campaign that has been running since 1979. Iran has lived under some form of U.S. sanction for over four decades. The “Maximum Pressure” campaign initiated by the first Trump administration in 2018 aimed to drive Iranian oil exports to zero. While it succeeded in plunging exports to around 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) at its peak, it did not collapse the government.

Today, Iran has not only recovered but has adapted. Current estimates place Iranian oil exports at over 1.6 million bpd, with the vast majority flowing to China. The threat now is to extend “secondary sanctions” to any nation buying Iranian oil. However, the efficacy of this threat is undermined by the very structure of the global economy that the United States helped create: the petrodollar system.

The U.S. Treasury’s ability to sanction hinges on the centrality of the Dollar and the SWIFT messaging system. Yet, the infrastructure of evasion is now mature. Iran has spent 30 years perfecting the “black market” of oil. The system described by intelligence analysts—where proceeds never touch a direct Iranian account but are routed through third-party shell companies in Asia, often utilizing Chinese Yuan—has rendered the U.S. financial radar partially blind.

Furthermore, Iran’s strategic integration into the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and new members like the UAE and Egypt) provides a lifeline. The BRICS New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement are actively working on a unified payment system—the “BRICS Pay”—designed to bypass SWIFT.

China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) has seen a 30% year-on-year increase in daily processing volume. When Iran sells oil to China and receives payment in Yuan via CIPS, the transaction bypasses the New York banking system entirely. The “weaponization” of the dollar has simply accelerated the global de-dollarization trend; central banks worldwide currently hold 58% of their reserves in USD, down from 71% two decades ago.

The domestic economic situation in the United States further undermines the credibility of this new sanctions regime. The President’s assertion of a “flourishing economy” rings hollow against the data. The U.S. national debt has surpassed $40 trillion—a staggering figure that is five times the federal government’s annual receipts of approximately $8 trillion.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that interest payments on this debt will soon consume 20% of all federal spending, rivaling the defense budget. This fiscal fragility manifests in tangible economic pain: recent data revealed a loss of 27,000 jobs in a single month, and inflation, while moderating, remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, exacerbated by supply chain disruptions caused by the war.

The collapse of Walmart’s stock—an 8% single-day drop that erased nearly $45 billion in market capitalization—is a bellwether. Walmart represents the American consumer base; its decline signals a shift from spending to saving, a precursor to recession. A nation drowning in debt and teetering on a consumer downturn lacks the economic oxygen to sustain a protracted global trade war against nations trading with Iran.

Finally, the geopolitical map renders this new sanction regime diplomatically unsustainable. The nations refusing to align with U.S. economic dictates represent over half of the world’s population.

China and India continue to buy Russian and Iranian energy because it is economically rational. Brazil, led by a leftist government, has no interest in enforcing American secondary sanctions against its own agricultural or industrial sectors.

The global South, observing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the reckless military gambit in Iran, views the U.S. not as a moral leader but as a destabilizing force. The threat to sanction any nation trading with Iran is an ultimatum the world is no longer willing to accept.

The era of the “American Century” ended not with a bang in the deserts of Iran, but with the realization that economic coercive power, like military power, is finite. The United States has failed to win the war; it is equally likely to fail in winning the peace. The pivot to “economic excruciation” is not a strategy for victory, but a coping mechanism for a superpower struggling to accept the limits of its own waning influence.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : The Strait of Hormuz presents a puzzle that cannot be resolved through official statements alone. Iran claims that no vessel can use the waterway without its authorization. The United States simultaneously says that its naval “wall of steel” is preventing ships from entering or leaving Iranian ports.
If both claims were completely accurate, the consequences should have become catastrophic. Iranian oil would be trapped by the United States, while petroleum belonging to Washington’s Gulf allies would be blocked by Iran. The resulting pincer movement should have removed an enormous volume of oil and gas from international markets.
After almost six months of war, however, the anticipated worldwide collapse has not occurred. Brent crude remains around $87 rather than $150 or $200. Transportation and insurance costs have increased, but most countries have not declared that their fuel reserves are exhausted. There are no universal gasoline lines, comprehensive rationing programs or widespread refinery closures.
The contradiction demands an explanation.Iran has demonstrated that its restrictions are not merely rhetorical. The United Arab Emirates says at least 15 vessels connected with ADNOC have been attacked since the war began. Several attacks occurred during August alone, producing deaths, injuries and operational disruption.
Saudi Arabia faces pressure at both ends of its export system. Iranian power threatens shipping through Hormuz, while the Houthis have declared a maritime embargo against Saudi-linked vessels around the Red Sea. Qatari LNG operations and tankers have also suffered disruption.
The United States, meanwhile, is preventing ships from entering and leaving Iranian ports. CENTCOM has intercepted or redirected Iran-linked vessels and says the blockade can be maintained indefinitely.
The EIA estimates that petroleum flows declined from approximately 21.6 million barrels per day before the conflict to 4.9 million during the second quarter of 2026. Recent private estimates range between 1.74 million and 6.98 million barrels daily. The reduction is therefore real and historically significant.
That produces another puzzle. If a Chinese tanker receives Iranian permission to transport Saudi or Emirati oil, the Gulf producer still exports its petroleum and receives revenue. The cargo also remains available to the world market. Iran would be controlling the destination—not blockading the oil itself.
Strategic and commercial stocks provide part of the answer. The International Energy Agency reports that observed worldwide oil inventories have declined by approximately 410 million barrels since the war began—an average depletion of 2.7 million barrels per day.
The global numbers are revealing. Supply has fallen by about 4.3 million barrels per day, while high prices and economic weakness have reduced demand by approximately 1.6 million. The remaining deficit is around 2.7 million barrels daily—almost exactly the reported rate at which inventories are declining.
This explains why the shortage has not yet produced universal rationing. But inventories cannot explain the whole system. Stored petroleum cannot indefinitely replace the enormous quantity historically transported through Hormuz.
Attention must therefore shift outside the Persian Gulf. The IEA estimates that production from the Americas has increased by approximately 1.4 million barrels per day during 2026. The United States is producing around 13.8 million barrels daily, while Canada, Brazil, Guyana and Argentina are expanding output.
Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela have collectively delivered the largest increase in petroleum exports from any producing region during 2026. Venezuela exported approximately 1.16 million barrels daily in July, including about 786,000 barrels per day to the United States—the highest American-bound volume since early 2019.
Russia remains another important supplier. Despite attacks on its refineries, it continues sending crude to China and India. Damage to Russian refining capacity can paradoxically increase crude exports because oil that cannot be processed domestically becomes available for foreign shipment.
Nigeria and Angola are supplying additional African crude. Nigeria’s Dangote refinery has increased gasoline and fertilizer exports to African countries deprived of traditional Middle Eastern supplies.
India has become an essential refining bridge. It buys Russian, Brazilian, Venezuelan, Nigerian and Angolan crude, processes it domestically, and exports diesel, gasoline and aviation fuel to Asia and Europe.
Qatari LNG losses are being replaced partly by the United States, Australia, Nigeria, Angola and Oman. Saudi Arabia moves crude through its East-West pipeline to Yanbu, while the UAE exports through Fujairah and uses shuttle tankers and ship-to-ship transfers outside Hormuz.
The functioning market is therefore not evidence that nothing has changed. It is evidence that the international energy system is being reconstructed while the war continues.
Every month of disruption strengthens alternative suppliers. Importers that once depended on the Persian Gulf are signing contracts elsewhere. Refineries are learning to process different crude grades, while investors are financing pipelines, terminals and offshore production beyond Hormuz.
These emergency arrangements may become permanent. Once countries spend billions adapting their infrastructure, they have little reason to restore their previous dependence completely.
Iran may therefore be damaging not only American allies but its own strategic position. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait risk losing customers and their reputation for reliable delivery. However, the USA and American and Western Hemisphere producers are gaining customers and influence.
This market transformation raises a question more consequential than the original shipping puzzle: was the redistribution of energy power merely an unintended consequence?
In 2025, China demonstrated that control of strategic resources could become a geopolitical weapon. Beijing tightened restrictions on rare-earth elements, processing technology and permanent magnets essential to American automobiles, aircraft, missiles, radar systems, semiconductors, robotics and industrial machinery.
The United States could identify new mineral deposits, but it could not quickly reproduce China’s refining and magnet-manufacturing ecosystem. Beijing had acquired leverage capable of interrupting American factories and defence production without military action.
Washington needed comparable bargaining power. China imports approximately 70 percent of the petroleum it consumes, much of it through vulnerable maritime routes. Oil and its transportation system offered a possible counterweight.
Before the Iran war, Trump demanded “total access” to Venezuelan oil. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest reported proven petroleum reserves. Iran possesses enormous oil and gas deposits while occupying the northern coastline of the waterway carrying approximately one-fifth of global petroleum consumption.
Senator Lindsey Graham later connected the two countries explicitly: “Venezuela and Iran have 31 percent of the world’s oil reserves… This is China’s nightmare. This is a good investment.”
Graham described American control of Hormuz as “checkmate.” Trump subsequently declared that the United States could open the waterway, “take the oil” and “make a fortune.”
These statements reveal a strategic philosophy. China possessed leverage over the minerals and magnets required by the United States. Washington could answer by acquiring influence over the petroleum and shipping routes required by China.
The official military objectives—supporting Israel, destroying missiles, preventing nuclear proliferation and weakening Iranian regional influence—remain part of the explanation. But they do not necessarily constitute the entire explanation.
The inquiry began with two allegedly airtight blockades and a strangely resilient oil market. It then uncovered inventory depletion, alternative suppliers, new trade routes and a historic transfer of energy influence away from the Persian Gulf.
At the end of that trail stands a larger possibility: the Iran war may be one battlefield in an American attempt to create energy leverage against China’s mineral power.
What appeared to be a war centred upon Iran and Israel may ultimately be part of a much greater contest over who controls the indispensable resources—and therefore the geopolitical bargaining power—of the twenty-first century.