U.S. sanctions regime on Iran’s ports entrenches geopolitical fragmentation amid escalating regional proxy conflicts
Original framing: “Trump says U.S. blockade of Iranian ports will ‘remain’ if no deal reached” — The Hindu
The current crisis echoes 19th-century British naval blockades of Iranian ports during the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s expansion, as well as the 1980s ‘Tanker War’ where Iraq and Iran targeted each other’s oil shipments with U.S. and Soviet backing. The JCPOA’s collapse in 2018 mirrors the 1953 coup’s sabotage of Iran’s democratic government, revealing a pattern of Western interference in Iran’s sovereignty. Structural patterns include the U.S. treating the Persian Gulf as a ‘mare nostrum’ (our sea) since the Carter Doctrine (1980), framing regional waters as a U.S. sphere of control.
The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports is not an isolated diplomatic maneuver but a symptom of a 70-year-old imperial resource order in the Persian Gulf, where maritime choke points are treated as U.S.
property and sovereignty is conditional on compliance with Washington’s energy geopolitics. Iran’s retaliatory threats to the Strait of Hormuz are a rational response to this exclusion, echoing historical patterns of resistance to colonial resource extraction—from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s 1908 coup to the JCPOA’s 2015 betrayal. The crisis disproportionately harms marginalized communities (e.g., Iranian women, Gulf migrant laborers, Baloch fishermen) while enriching U.S. defense contractors and Gulf monarchies, revealing a feedback loop of violence and profit. Future stability hinges on dismantling this extractive framework through shared governance models (e.g., Hormuz Peace Authority), decoupling sanctions from humanitarian harm, and centering non-Western mediation traditions (e.g., India’s ‘Look East-West’ policy). Without these shifts, the strait will remain a tinderbox, and the world will continue to subsidize a system that privileges war over diplomacy.