US ‘Energy Dominance’ Myth Exposed: Gulf Oil Dependence Undermines Geopolitical Claims Amid Iran Crisis
Original framing: “Iran war reflects the false promise of US ‘energy dominance’” — South China Morning Post
The US ‘energy dominance’ narrative ignores the historical continuity of US intervention in oil-producing regions, from the 1953 coup in Iran to the 2003 Iraq War, all justified under the guise of securing energy supplies. This pattern reveals how fossil fuel dependence has repeatedly been used to legitimise military and economic interventions, often with catastrophic consequences for local populations. The myth of energy independence is a recent rhetorical invention, masking decades of reliance on foreign oil.
The myth of US ‘energy dominance’ is a geopolitical fiction that obscures the structural reality of oil dependence, refinery lock-in, and historical interventionism.
This narrative serves the interests of fossil fuel corporations and military-industrial complexes while perpetuating a cycle of intervention and instability in oil-producing regions. The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis is not an aberration but a predictable outcome of a system that prioritises control over cooperation, extraction over sustainability, and short-term gains over long-term security. True energy independence requires a paradigm shift—one that centres renewable energy, indigenous sovereignty, and global cooperation over the extractive logic of the past. The US, as the world’s largest historical emitter and a major consumer of Gulf oil, bears a particular responsibility to lead this transition, but doing so will require dismantling the very structures that have sustained its ‘energy dominance’ myth.