That exact scenario is already causing massive global economic disruption, with Brent crude surging toward $85 a barrel as the U.S.-Iran conflict over the Strait of Hormuz escalates. Panic buying and military blockades have choked off nearly 20% of the world's energy supplies, creating severe energy security risks.
The combination of shipping chokepoints and depleted global petroleum reserves is triggering cascading effects across the global economy:
• Energy Market Volatility: As the June ceasefire collapsed, Brent crude pushed toward $86.88 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) hovered around $79. Meanwhile, domestic pump prices remain elevated, with U.S. diesel averaging around $5 a gallon.
• Supply Chain Stress: The International Energy Agency (IEA) has labeled the Hormuz crisis as the "greatest global energy security challenge in history," as attacks and blockades disrupt both crude and liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows.
• Broader Inflation: The shock is driving up costs for everyday necessities, agriculture, and transportation, putting extreme pressure on both domestic markets and international trade.
“WASHINGTON -- With the U.S. and Iran slugging it out over the Strait of Hormuz again, each nation is running out of time to achieve its goals. The question is whose clock expires first.
President Trump would prefer a resolution before the November midterm elections and before oil prices rise back to painful levels for Americans.
Tehran is hoping it can outlast Trump before a reimposed U.S. naval blockade cripples its reeling economy -- and without provoking another large-scale U.S.-Israeli attack aimed at toppling the Islamic government.
Each side has concluded that its best course is to resume the conflict at a low level, while waiting for the other to buckle, analysts said. "It's really about endurance now," said Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow specializing in Iran at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
For Tehran, the immediate task is to maintain its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, using its battered but still formidable array of small boats and antiship missiles to block vessels from exiting the Persian Gulf. Achieving this would raise the pressure on Trump, as it did after the war began, but there is less time before U.S. voters go to the polls.
For Washington, the challenge is to find a way to slip out of that knot, by degrading Iranian military sites that threaten shipping and by curtailing Iran's oil exports with a reimposed naval blockade. The strategy had limited success early in the conflict, but it might show better results as the toll on Iran mounts.
"Iran basically thinks that it can attack enough vessels that they'll effectively suppress shipping in the strait," said Rosemary Kelenic, director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank. "Trump seems to think the U.S. has found a way to get significant quantities of oil out of Hormuz, even if the Iranians don't cooperate."
The U.S. has cleared shipping lanes off the southern Hormuz coast of Oman to help commercial vessels transit the Gulf. During the past two months, U.S. forces have helped more than 800 ships sail through the waterway, the U.S. military has said.
As the ceasefire has crumbled, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hit and disabled ships using the southern route with its missiles and drones, killing and injuring crew members, and alarming shipping companies. Tehran wants vessels to use the strait's northern passage, which hugs Iran's coast.
The attacks are threatening to choke off traffic and once again raise oil prices, after they returned briefly to prewar levels last month.
U.S. strikes that restarted last week continued Tuesday and Wednesday, said the U.S. military, which added that its "forces began launching an additional round of strikes against Iran to continue degrading Iranian capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz." The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and shipping resumed Tuesday afternoon.
The ticking clock that both sides face as the fighting resumes in some ways favors Tehran, as long as it can keep the conflict contained.
"They don't want to escalate to the point where escalation would get out of control, where Trump is out of options other than more extreme military options," Azizi said.
Although the blockade is likely to harm Iran's economy further, Tehran has shown it can absorb such costs and is seeking to reconstitute missile arsenals and air defenses that have been badly degraded during the conflict.
The U.S. is unlikely to be able to stop Iran from threatening shipping in the strait without a sharp increase in its military effort, which it won't risk for reasons rooted in domestic politics, Alan Eyre, a former senior State Department negotiator with Iran who is now at the Middle East Institute, said in a social-media post Tuesday.
With the U.S. elections looming, Iran has to worry that Trump might escalate attacks, seeking a clear-cut victory instead of allowing the conflict to continue through the midterms. Such a strategy, however, would carry heavy risks for Trump, analysts said. Iran likely would retaliate against U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf and even against Israel. The U.S. is facing shortages of interceptors that are critical for knocking out incoming missiles, making it dicier for Trump to stretch the clock.” [1]
1. World News: Iran, U.S. Face Shrinking Options --- Elections, oil prices constrain Trump; Tehran gambles it can outlast blockade. Cloud, David S; Holliday, Shelby. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 16 July 2026: A7.
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