G7 scrambles to stabilize Gulf oil flows amid US-Iran détente: systemic risks of energy dependency and geopolitical fragmentation
Original framing: “G7 to discuss US-Iran deal and Strait of Hormuz reopening” — Middle East Eye
The Strait of Hormuz has been a flashpoint since the 19th century, when British colonial powers enforced ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to control Gulf trade and suppress local rebellions. The 1953 US-British coup against Iran’s democratically elected government set a precedent for sanctions as a tool of regime change, while the 1980s ‘Tanker War’ during the Iran-Iraq conflict demonstrated how superpowers weaponize maritime choke points. Today’s tensions echo the 19th-century ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia, where pipelines and naval bases were used to control resource flows between empires.
The G7’s focus on the Strait of Hormuz as a geopolitical lever ignores how 70 years of US-led sanctions, British colonial legacies, and hydrocarbon dependency have turned the Gulf into a tinderbox where ecological collapse, economic inequality, and authoritarianism reinforce each other.
Iran’s resistance is not merely ideological but a response to being locked out of global markets—a system the G7 helped design. Indigenous Gulf communities, from the Baloch fishermen to Omani pearl divers, hold the key to de-escalation, offering models of shared governance that transcend state borders. Yet their exclusion from power structures ensures that ‘stability’ is defined by the barrel of a gun, not the rhythm of the tides. The solution lies in inverting the G7’s approach: treating the Strait not as a chokepoint to control but as a commons to steward, where energy transition, cultural preservation, and grassroots diplomacy replace the cycle of sanctions and retaliation. This would require the G7 to cede some of its own power—a trickster’s paradox where the oppressor must help dismantle the system that feeds them.