The Siege of Iran Is Working. That's the Trap.

In a single sentence this week, the U.S. military described its own position in the Gulf: to keep energy flowing, the Navy is escorting commercial vessels through a corridor off the Omani coast, while Iran remains under economic pressure from a U.S. naval blockade ^[1]. Both halves are true at once. That is the whole story, and it is not a story about failure. The siege is working. Iran's vice president says the country cannot import petrol because of the blockade.

Petrol production is insufficient, and because of the US naval blockade, we cannot import it. — Mohammad Jafar Ghaempanah

Inflation is above 80 percent, the rial has collapsed past 1.8 million to the dollar, and President Pezeshkian has admitted the obvious.

Our problems have multiplied several times over, while our income has also fallen. — Masoud Pezeshkian

This is not a pressure campaign that missed. It is a pressure campaign that landed — and the landing is the problem. The waters the blockade closes to Iran carry roughly a fifth of the world's oil. Shutting them has produced the largest supply crisis on record, with conflict-affected countries now accounting for 43 percent of global supply and emergency reserves largely spent ^[2]. So Washington, which went to war to keep the strait free, now spends its days keeping the strait open — for everyone except the country it is blockading. The same Navy running the blockade has escorted more than 1,300 commercial vessels through a shadow corridor since May ^[3]. The government has built a $20 billion insurance facility to underwrite the trade its own blockade endangers ^[1]. And the shortage has rippled outward: Washington asked Ukraine to pause its drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, because the world could no longer afford disruption in a second theater ^[4]. The siege of Iran has made the United States the global manager of oil shipping — suppressing disruption everywhere to compensate for the disruption it is causing in the Gulf. Then the diplomacy inverts. The corridor the U.S. needs cannot be legitimized by the U.S., so it is being brokered by Oman and Qatar ^[5][6]. The same week, the president threatened to bomb Oman for its role in the strait while his own diplomats sat down with Oman to collaborate on the corridor ^[7]. And the terms are being set by Iran. Tehran has approved tolls of 5 to 7 percent per barrel on transit through the strait.

Article 3 of the 'Strategic Action to Ensure the Security and Progress of the Strait of Hormuz' plan was approved by the National Security Commission, according to which ships from countries authorised to pass through the Strait of Hormuz will pay for the services provided by Iran. — Ebrahim Rezaei

Its price for reopening is that the U.S. lift the blockade, lift the sanctions, and unfreeze assets ^[6].

I want to state clearly that the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened until the American commitments stipulated in the memorandum of understanding... are implemented — Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf

The siege was meant to force Iranian concessions. It has inverted the leverage: Iran now holds the reopening as the card Washington needs. And the pressure is now pushing Iran toward withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and enriching uranium to weapons grade ^[8]. The stated purpose of the entire confrontation was to keep Iran from a bomb. Economic collapse removes the incentives for restraint that kept Iran inside the framework. The siege is producing the exact escalation it was designed to prevent. None of this means the blockade failed. It means the blockade succeeded its way into a position where the United States is the guarantor of the shipping it endangers, and is negotiating with the adversary it declared economically dead. Iran's deputy foreign minister put the new arrangement plainly.

the Strait of Hormuz is under Iran's command, not the US Central Command (CENTCOM). — Kazem Gharibabadi

The country Washington set out to isolate is now charging tolls on the waterway the U.S. went to war to keep free.